


Awakening: A Feast of Fate

by Hircine_Taoist



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Jaskier | Dandelion, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Needs a Hug, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, M/M, Mental/psionic non-sexual non-con, Not-those-kinds-of-tentacles, Original Monster - Freeform, POV Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, POV Jaskier | Dandelion, POV Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Protective Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Tentacles, eventual Geralt/Jaskier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:34:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 37,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29274783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hircine_Taoist/pseuds/Hircine_Taoist
Summary: Geralt falls into the clutches of an ancient being, hungry and starving for more than meat and bone. With Geralt’s existence slipping away, Jaskier desperately joins forces with Yennefer to save his beloved friend.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 18
Kudos: 43
Collections: Monstrum Monthly Prompt, Monstrum Weekly Short Form and Sketch Challenges





	1. Grasp

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know how to blurb or write single chapter stuff, but wanted to do a challenge, so I combined the Monthly Awakening challenge from the Monstrum discord server with its Weekly Word Prompt challenge, which contains three words weekly. I take inspiration from both the Tv series and the game, so if there's a confusing mix, it's my fault.
> 
> Starting off, I have three chapters, each containing the weekly word prompts Grasp, Glory, and Galvanizing--the current chapter titles. I might not always stay with a three chapter pattern, but we will see! We'll also see what unfolds, as I don't know what tomorrow's three word prompts will be. (That's right--I'm half-pantsing this!)
> 
> Please bear in mind that this will likely contain little to no smut. I'll update the tags as needed. Also, bear with these chapters. There are some confusing jumps between memory and the present, and that will be the theme in this story A LOT. I'll try to make it clear when there is a memory jump, but feel free to point out confusions and I'll try to edit to make things clearer. 
> 
> Forgot to add--I should be updating every Sunday until completion. The challenge runs to the end of the month. Just be careful because I might post more than one chapter a day.
> 
> I should have all three starting chapters up by the end of the day! Big thanks to betas [Miah_Arthur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miah_Arthur) and [Maimat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maimat%22). Check out their stuff!

Water muffled the world, changing sounds into dull waves that rang more solid and final than in air. Bubbles escaped his mouth, loud in his ears. His medallion vibrated against his chest. Cold pressure weighed on him, but hot adrenaline coursed under his skin. Icy wet ran down his nose, trickling down his throat as he strained across slippery stones for the rippling sunlight above.

_Stay calm. Don’t waste your air._

Easier thought than done. He fought against the spasm of his lungs, only his mutant body staving away the urge to attempt breathing. Geralt had struggled this far, away from the large slabs of sunken ruins, up the current-smoothed stones, forced his way up the slope toward the muddy, reedy shore. He could feel sun-warmed currents running past his clawing fingers and arms. His bare foot sank in silt and mushy water weeds, the thick, biologically rich mud that settled on the edges of healthy ponds. He was _close_. Just a little further. His hands scraped on a rock in the soft muck, loosening it. The stone skated down the slope into deeper water, leaving a cloud of fine, nearly-black clay mud to roll up in its wake. The water darkened with disturbed soil, like a nightly storm stealing the sun-glittered sky.

The grasp on his leg remained.

_Let go, you fuck!_

But it didn’t release him, attempting to pull him back into the cold dark. He sensed the thing’s hunger. It pricked at the normally numb animal part of his brain, lighting it with prey-fear. Were the predator a physical threat of slavering jaws and sharp teeth at his back, his slow heart would remain steady and unperturbed. Instead, his pulse beat twice its tempo, still slower than a human’s, but the pound of it thumped hard in his chest. The knells of his heartbeat alone made the witcher understand the nearness of death’s embrace, and something _worse_ , something he was too busy trying to survive to contemplate. 

The web of white tentacles pulled, and he slipped almost fully down to his belly on the water-logged slope. The constriction around his ankle and calf throbbed painfully. The starvation hunting him had no tooth or tongue, but licked right at his being, and he knew if he didn’t get free now, he was _fucked_. 

His hands dug into the bank, and even though whatever wrapped around his leg held monstrous strength, Geralt’s strength was equally monstrous and his stubbornness even fiercer. He clawed into the soft mud, wounding the water’s edge with deep gouges as more bubbles escaped his lips. The taste of wet earth filled his mouth, fine grime coating his teeth with grit. He couldn’t see any longer, but his grasping hands were breaking the surface with noisy _splooshes_ and watery slaps. Reeds bent and uprooted under his fingers. He dug in his free foot, mud squelching between his toes until he hit harder clay, and pushed himself further up even as he felt the _thing_ wrapped around his leg bunch and grasp higher, up the back of his thigh. 

More air left him, a drowned hiss. It felt like the damned thing was gripping _through_ him. His mid-shin trousers did nothing to fend away the jolt to his nerves, nor the numbness that spread up the back of his leg. He could feel a finger-thick appendage questing under the edge of his off-white shirt, smaller hair-thin tentilla sticking to the skin above his hip. 

Geralt bent his will on moving forward, again quashing the gong of alarm attempting to overtake his brain. The touch sank into him, prodding at his mind. He was familiar with the sensation, like the slippery soft fingers of a sorceress rifling through his thoughts, except this felt like talon tips tapping at his vulnerabilities.

 _Not today_ , he promised, growling as his head broke the water’s surface briefly, not far enough to gain a proper breath. _Not today!_ He strained forward, trying to get his nose and mouth above the surface. Even with the killer whale’s rotten taste still in his throat, he needed air. The adrenaline in his body only consumed the precious oxygen faster, and he’d had to fight for every inch back to the surface. 

The whisper soft voice in his head snaked new chills through his heated blood. _No, you will not leave. You mustn’t leave!_

Just a little further… Just a little further!

Another bunch of the many limbs on his leg and torso, and the web of tentacles snatched up him, pressing into his spine. Geralt jerked, his muscles convulsing under the onslaught of his nerves being pierced. His mind flailed under the invisible assault. _The wriggling fingers reached right into him and_ —

— _The taste of potion in his throat was disgustingly fresh, the rot of buckthorn and the sticky fibers of drowner tongue in his mouth so strong even the powerful tang of bitter balisse couldn’t help the flavor at all. His lungs were full, his limbs lively and unweary. The spring-fed water possessed a refreshing chill, and this may have been a pleasant swim were he not so alert._

Geralt balked mentally. This was his memory, but a few moments earlier, replaying in his mind so richly he could feel and see every detail as though he were back in his skin then as he swam down around the water-smoothed ruins. Yet he couldn’t affect how he’d swam among the pale stone, searching along the edges, couldn’t make himself hasten away from the danger. He could only rewatch as he neared a slab at the deepest point, silver sword in hand, no armor to speak of. He could feel the presence now as he did then, tasting at his presence like a strange wraith. 

He’d been cautious as he searched for any sign of human remains, but the slab of stone had moved at the same time his medallion rattled against his chest. 

The surrounding water plunged downward, yanking him forward by the current. Something like a white tree limb, or perhaps a fan of coral, had swiped from the water-sucking gloom for him. The only thing that had saved his head from being immediately grabbed was his silver sword stabbing through the joining mass of the long tentacles, many as long as he was. A mental shriek stunned him, appendages writhing. _Thin glassy strands flowed in the swinging limbs’ wake, and a brush stung his hand_ —

—Geralt jolted back to the present, stiff and disoriented. His lungs screamed. He struggled for the surface like a wildcat. At last his chin broke the surface. He choked on water streamlets as he pulled himself forward, reeds and mud tight in his fingers as numb tingling spread through his spine.

The only sensation past the small pricks of pain in his back was the weight of the mass on him. His body felt as heavy as lead as he fought to lift himself from the water. After the suffocated, low sounds below, the airy sounds above were fleeting and high. His breath heaved raw from his stinging throat, his heartbeat a hard drum. Birds trilled in the trees. Water trickled through the bright green, round pond leaves, algae, and reedy grass. A pleasant breeze swayed through tree branches. 

The voice of the thing screamed inside him. _Mine! You are MINE!_

His foot _blooshed_ as he forced himself forward, falling to hands and knee. He stooped, struggling, feeling the weight and creeping numbness, pin-prickly sensation spreading to his ribs. Gasping, he stubbornly forged ahead. The burden dragged, the creature heavier the more he tried to pry himself out of the water. 

_No, you will not leave… I need MORE._

Two tentacles pried from his back, whipping up. Geralt bit his teeth together hard as they slapped against his cheek and forehead, yanking his head backward. Pain shot through his skull, his consciousness hit like a hammer. 

The present went black, the witcher hurled into another memory...


	2. Glory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt word, "Glory". More memory tumbling here! Also, uh, look away if you're grossed out by eyeball touching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This now has artwork by the wonderful [Maimat!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maimat) See the end notes of the chapter!

_“So? What is it? Drowners?”_

Geralt tilted his head, confused at the sudden shift. _Hadn’t he just been…?_

But here he faced the water hole he’d tracked the signs to, studying the white stone looming near the surface like the giant skull of some long dead monster. Some stone was so worn it almost seemed natural. Some, even so weathered with age, contained too straight of edges to be anything but ruins in the water filled hollow.

Jaskier’s voice sounded behind him. “Or maybe those gangly, awful smelling water things with the huge, uh… _claws_.”

_I’m in another memory._

He cast his gaze around, unsettled. He could vaguely feel his body’s adrenaline, the sense of danger, the pain in his head and limbs, but they were distant. The memory seemed much more _real_. Sunlight soaked into his cloak, mingled with the phantom feel of cold water dripping off his beleaguered frame. Roach nipped up grass behind him. Jaskier’s familiar cologne tickled at his nose.

 _This was a few days ago. I’d followed the tracks to this place. Jaskier had tagged along. But I’m not here. I’m_ there, _and if I don’t get back somehow, I’m dead._

But he didn’t know how to return. Even while he scrambled mentally, trying to reconnect with his struggling body, in the memory he stooped a few paces from the water, honing in his senses to scan all the tracks coming and going from the pond.

Typically when a monster lurked in an area, there were invariably signs of animal leeriness. Yet here he saw clearly among the mud and undisturbed water plants the prints of heron, deer, raccoon, fox, a wild cat, and other fauna. They came here to drink and eat, and didn’t seem disturbed. Even now, the chatter of content wildlife gave no cause for concern. Dragonflies zipped around the surface in search of gnats. The steam slipped easily into the pool, a quiet, soothing babble. Roach munched on clover growing alongside the deer trail they’d followed, far from alarmed.

Aside from his sense of unease, only one thing gave a hint anything was amiss.

 _Idiot,_ he thought at his past self. _Follow your instinct!_

But he hadn’t. Instead, he rubbed at his mouth, stubble rasping over his calloused fingers. He felt that more than the uncomfortable pull on his neck in the present. Geralt tried to focus on the sense of pulling, but it slipped away. In his memory, he only narrowed his eyes, crouching and watching the still green surface. He’d scoured his memory at the time, trying to think of any similar scenarios, uneasy.

He must have been murmuring to himself without realizing, as he often did when thinking through evidence, because Jaskier stepped closer, proclaiming, “What was that? My dear man, you really must speak up!”

He frowned, but spoke louder for Jaskier’s benefit. He didn’t _need_ to, but this season he found himself doing it more often for the bard. “Everything else comes and goes freely from here.” He stared back at the water. “Except humans.”

“Eh? How so?” Jaskier stood right next to him now, shifting his weight on his other hip. Geralt felt his body heat. Which disoriented him, because he felt _cold_ climbing up his legs.

_Shit, it must be pulling me back in the water. How do I get back?_

But his past self continued on, heedless of his current mortal peril. “There are no traces of any person leaving,” he explained as he straightened. “The family members came to the water’s edge, stood there, then nothing. A fourth person, too. Adult, likely male.”

“So, not some big-breasted toad with too many teeth?” the bard asked.

“No.” Geralt paced along the pond’s edge, careful to remain away from easy reach of the water. A frog or turtle skidded away from the shore, leaving a puff of stirred muck in its wake as it sheltered closer to the stream’s mouth. Waterbirds waited for them to leave, giving soft _whoops_ in the young trees. Roach continued to graze behind them. She pulled tufts of grass up noisily.

Like her, Geralt smelled nothing alarming, save for a strange… brine smell? Maybe seaweed? It was too subtle for him to pinpoint. The water came in, but after that, it must go _down_ , somewhere below the ruins. That caused him concern, but also a begrudging note that Yennefer had been right about there being ruins in this area. The worn stone here must only be the tip of something larger, and old ruins could hold many dangerous unknowns.

_Like the thing currently pulling me to my death? Come on, snap out of it!_

“So not hags or drowners,” Jaskier noted.

Past-Geralt shook his head. “The area is too clean. There aren’t any bones around, no signs of a struggle, discarded clothes…” He trailed off in a mutter. He didn’t smell rot, or blood, and the only thing he saw in the pond were pale stones and the dark remains of a few fallen trees.

“Wraiths?” Jaskier guessed.

Another shake of his head. “Wraiths leave remains. Clues.”

Hands jauntily atop his hips, the bard frowned, then waved daintily toward the water. “Maybe the bodies are under those big rocks then.”

_Which is where my body is headed if I don’t…!_

“They’re not rocks.” He ignored Jaskier’s querying sound. His past-self paced back and forth around the edges before he got to the soft bank of the gentle stream feeding the body of water, back the other way till the rising nettles and brush blocked his path. He stopped, staring at the water. “I don’t like it,” he announced.

“You don’t—Sorry, did you say ‘you don’t like it’? New mystery. New monster murder to solve, and it’s not in a swampy bog for once.” Jaskier started for the water’s edge, motioning. “What’s not to like?”

Geralt gripped him hard enough for the bard to “ow!” in protest, hauling him back by his arm several steps while Jaskier protested. He leaned in close, pointing. “You don’t go near the water,” he growled.

Jaskier’s blue eyes stared wide but not nearly frightened enough. “Why? What is it?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

Frustratingly, he still didn’t. He’d only glimpsed the creature briefly. He knew it had a white body and two arms that ended in huge, fanning tentacles. It was longer and heavier than him. It definitely possessed psychic powers. Cold continued to creep up his distant feeling body, pain throbbing remotely in his head.

Jaskier didn’t understand the danger. Nor had Geralt then. The bard’s face lit up. “Maybe something unrecorded, then! A new monster?”

Geralt turned from him, heading back to Roach.

“Wait, where are you going?” Jaskier opened his mouth and closed it in quick succession as Geralt placed the bit back in Roach’s mouth. She stubbornly held her teeth together before giving in. “No, you’re seriously not leaving, are you?” He waved back to the pond, as though it were a grand stage for a new production. “Geralt, think of the _glory_!”

The same pinch bit under his sternum that had then. Right, Jaskier was there for the story, for inspiration, to write his ballads on heroes and adventure.

Except Geralt wasn’t a hero. He wasn’t a kind gallant. He was a witcher. He'd come to the area at the behest of Yennefer to look for ruins as he took contracts. The only job he’d found was from a woman, likely now a widow, who’d lost her two children and husband. First the son went missing, then the older sister when she looked for him, then the husband when he’d searched for both. They'd been gone for more than two weeks. He knew the woman lied about how much she could pay, and even that was a pittance of the usual witcher’s fee.

Of course Jaskier assured her they would look into it, so here he was, and only because of that. Or so Geralt told himself.

Still, if it wasn’t for payment, it certainly wasn’t for glory. Witchers didn’t do what they did for _glory_. When Geralt first started on the path, he had delusions about being able to help others, being the knight between people and nightmarish monsters.

The world quickly corrected his thinking. Even after so many decades, it stirred the bitterness all over again, and he shook Jaskier, harder than he would have normally.

“Four people are likely dead in that pool, Jaskier, along with all the others that have gone missing over the years. There’s no glory here to record, just some unknown monster, and you’re not going near it.”

Geralt regretted the memory now, seeing Jaskier's face turn soft and hurt. “I know,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten the people, Geralt. I didn’t mean to make you think…”

That wasn’t why he snapped at him. Geralt didn’t think Jaskier callous to common people’s troubles. He knew him better than that. He’d snapped because he didn’t want Jaskier to _join_ those missing people. The thought of Jaskier walking to the water’s edge and being _gone_ was… No, he wouldn’t allow it.

Yet Geralt watched his past-self slap the reins into Jaskier’s hands without correcting the misunderstanding. “You’re taking Roach back to the farmstead and waiting for me.”

“But…”

“There’s no glory here, Jaskier. Some things came through the convergence that no one needs to meet, see, or know about, so you are leaving.”

He walked around Roach to remove one of the saddlebags. Roach wouldn’t give Jaskier any problems. The bard had won her over, spoiling her with little treats, and he knew to watch her for biting. She’d be safe with him, and _if anything happened to Geralt…_ —

— _He fell backward._

Water engulfed him, running up his nose and flooding his mouth. Up and down lost meaning as he scrambled for air and purchase to stop the insistent haul backward. He broke the surface briefly, gasping in air.

How long had it been? Time slipped. He knew that, but couldn’t tell how much. Had only seconds passed?

Another tentacle snatched up his jawline, curling around his chin. All three of the tapering limbs yanked him backward. His hands scrabbled uselessly at water; his feet slid. Another swallow that was half air, half water, and he plunged below the surface again, hands going to the tentacles and trying to scrape them off his skin.

The voice vibrated in his head, hungry and slavering as he pried a tentacle from his forehead, fighting the spongy, but terribly strong appendage from his scarred face.

_You’re mine! No fighting will save you! Give yourself to me!_

_Fuck you!_ he thought savagely, but he wriggled in water like a worm trying to unhook itself.

The hair like tentilla that floated about like glassy hair from the tentacles bent toward him, whiskers that wrapped around his fingers, stuck to his skin, quested for vulnerabilities. His thumb and forefinger numbed, barely able to feel the tentacles he tried to pry off. His back remained an uncomfortable smear of weight and pin pricks. His leg kicked ineffectually, heavy and useless.

White tentacles searched up his torso, neck and head for better grips. He never ceased fighting, staving off panic as he sank deeper, colder, his bare feet only bumping slippery rock as the surface distanced itself in the clouded water. When those hair-thin tentillas quested around his eye and he realized the creature’s intent, he bent all his strength and dwindling oxygen on pushing the tentacles back, gaining inches as the glassy fronds prodded at his clenched eyelids.

_No! No, you don’t! Stay out of me!_

The thin threads struggled in past his eyelashes. He clenched his teeth at a brush on his lips. He tossed his head side to side. His numb hands shook with effort.

 _A slip under his eyelid, stinging, and_ —

— _”I don’t need to tell you,” the sorceress stated with her usual imperiousness._ “What I need is for you to do as asked.”

He stared confused at the sorceress, at the dark waves of hair glimmering down her nearly bare back as she walked away across the spacious room to a desk. Gossamer cloth flowed and clung to the shape of her legs, see-through even in the candlelight. Fresh flowers bloomed in vases atop it from some admirer or other. A bowl of cherries, grapes, and citrus waited for idle snacking. Correspondence spread in loose leaves across the polished surface.

His hands were on his face. He couldn’t remember why. He looked to the left, trying to find the danger he felt so close to his skin. “Yen?”

She eyed him over her slim shoulder, power, grace, and knowing purple eyes. “So go to the region for me.” Her eyes flicked up and down, as though assessing if he were fit for the job. Or… something else. She rarely let her thoughts show, ever an enigmatic puzzle for him to guess at. “See if you can find this ruin.”

Oh, he remembered this. He had met her before he and Jaskier set out. He knew how he would respond, repeating it in a rote manner as he continued feeling at his face. His eye twitched uncontrollably, and he didn’t know why. “Can’t you find a ruin that size on your own?”

Yennefer sighed, not seeming to notice his twitching or the rove of his gaze searching the room for danger. “No, because something interferes with my scrying.” She picked up yellowed paper that curled at its edges. He heard the soft crinkle, smell the oaken logs in the fireplace, lilac and gooseberries, freshly bathed skin and incense, just as surely as he smelled and felt his own travel grime, the dirt under his nails, dried sweat under his armor, and dust in his hair. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and the aroma of chicken, cabbage, and wine made him salivate and his stomach clench.

It was all so *real*, but he’d been here before, and warning bells kept ringing in his mind even as he stood flat-footed and reliving how he’d felt in the moment. Yennefer stood beautiful and pristine, confident in sheer robes, and he waited for her to approach him, entirely the opposite. Geralt knew too that if she’d wanted his company, she would have had him led to the baths first, had dinner with him rather than having him brought to her immediately to discuss business.

He was used to it. The familiar heaviness pulled on his heart.

“This ruin is said to have something that can alter fate, design destiny. So I just need someone”—she gestured his being with a curl of fingertips and wrists—“with experience stumbling on old, lost things.”

He twitched, feeling something tickle at his ear, brushed at his hair to clear the sensation. With shaved sides and the rest of his white hair locked in a ponytail, there wasn’t anything to brush away. The sensation remained, adding to the sense of wrongness, but not enough to distract him from the ache welling in him.

Just once it’d be nice if she sought him out because she missed him.

So he lifted his chin, expression distant. “I have contracts.” He stepped back to turn and leave. “Perhaps you should find yourself another errand boy.”

She laughed, all too knowing. “You don’t want me to.”

Pain in his ear, a high-pitched whine in it. He leaned toward the pain. “Stop that!” he snapped.

“Stop what?”

“ _Reading_ me!” he snarled, even as the wrongness of the memory rankled. He hadn’t snapped at her before.

She responded the same as in his memory—wasn’t it a memory? He couldn’t tell, ear throbbing with his heartbeat, thudding faster than a witcher’s heart should. She smiled, amused and playful teeth showing as she approached him. “I didn’t. I just know you well enough.”

His mouth moved, his response as before, despite his attempt to say _”stop”_. “I have my own jobs to do.”

A small shake of her head, purple eyes through dark lashes and upturned lips. “You can still find contracts that direction, I’m sure.”

Lilac and gooseberry, leather, smoke, blood… brine… like seaweed. Geralt froze. “This isn’t real….”

She ignored his reply, drifting out of reach with a smirk. “I am busy as well. Go on. You got contracts, remember?”

“This isn’t real,” he bit out again. He gripped around his head, phantom lances of pain in his eye and ear. A hum quivered near his chest. His medallion, he realized.

The memory changed. He _felt_ it shift, something strange. Yen moved too fast and slow all at once as she turned back to him. She sighed, shaking her head as she stepped up to him.

_This wasn’t how it went. She’d walked away, knowing I watched her go, before I took my filthy self from her rooms and went to the region where she told me to go._

He felt cold, a wash of it. Pain. He tossed his head.

“You’re such a fighter,” Yennefer said. “So full of pain.”

She lifted her hand, touching his cheek. He wanted to retreat from the touch. He smelled the sea. Geralt tried to growl, but the shudder that rolled through him turned his demand quiet, strained. “Let go…”

“Pain…” Her fingers slid up nose and cheek. Her eyes were solid fields of pale, pale blue. Her finger raised near the corner of his eyes. He twitched, unable to move. “… And _purpose_.”

 _Her finger drove_ —

— _Tentacle_ drove into the corner of his eye, a sharp shoot of pain as it squelched into his socket. Even the pain-dimmed nerves from his mutations couldn’t handle when the creature touched his optic nerve. What little air in his lungs remained left in a gurgle of bubbles,

Geralt breathed water, and his body spasmed in rebellion. The spike of pain hammered behind his eye, blinding him, and he slipped into the cold black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A R T W O R K! 
> 
> (chef kiss) [Click here to check out Mimat's tumblr!](https://mai-of-rivia.tumblr.com/)


	3. Galvanizing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt word: Galvanizing. Jaskier POV.

Jaskier worried. 

Not that he showed it, of course. That would be unseemly. Geralt made it clear on a number of occasions that he was not a man to worry about. The witcher proved that to be true time and time again. Even when villagers were certain the witcher had perished trying to dispatch of some monster or other, Jaskier always kept bold confidence that Geralt of Rivia would never be defeated and no one was to touch his horse or belongings, nor give the contract to another until he returned. 

But inside, every time, there was a _fret_ that Jaskier couldn’t help. Every monster was a risk. Every confrontation could go sideways in a flash. While Geralt showed disdain toward anxiety for his well-being, he also made it clear that if he didn’t come back from a hunt, Jaskier was to consider him dead. He instructed Jaskier to be sure Roach lived a happy life and to see that his belongings made it back to a Wolf school witcher at some point. 

The subject of his possible, his _eventual_ death had always been so… so _casual_. Geralt accepted with no qualms that he would die during a fight, always speaking of it as though he were noting weather. Yet whenever he ordered Jaskier to never follow or try to find him, steel rang in his tone and stone hardened his yellow cat eyes. 

It wasn’t the best way of showing one cared, but Jaskier accepted it for what it was.

This time had been no different, but Geralt had been _edgier_ than usual. He didn’t like unknown factors. More than once Jaskier had seen him return to a village furious because the alderman hadn’t told him how many monsters to expect. The bard always chastised the people on those occasions, berating their attempt to publish a cheaper contract. It was _dangerous_ and might kill Geralt one day. His scarred body already stood testament to too many close calls.

Maybe one day Jaskier would know the stories behind all those scars. Maybe…

But that was a fantasy. Right now, the best he could do was accompany the scar-riddled man and praise his feats. _Galvanizing_ all the witcher had accomplished satisfied Jaskier immensely, and he’d happily do so until he was old and gray. 

Jaskier learned early on that as gruff as Geralt tried to appear, the man was a soft bleeding heart for those in need of rescue, quick to unsheathe his sword to defend others. He _adored_ him for it, but such gallantry also led to situations like _this_ , where the witcher expected little to no pay while risking himself. The strangeness of this contract only lent to Jaskier’s apprehension, but he knew the man wouldn’t turn away from the woman’s plight. 

Even though the wretch had told him bluntly that if he found her family that he best not hurt them or take advantage of her daughter. As though Geralt would _ever_ …! 

Jaskier at least possessed enough charm to change people. After a supper spent with the woman, she was now truly remorseful she’d spat those words at the witcher. For the past three days when Jaskier returned from seeing how the hunt was going, not only did she ask how the witcher fared, the whole hovel did.

Every day Jaskier rode the capricious (but lovely lady horse—let no one say different!) Roach the hour and a half out to where Geralt camped by the water hole. The first evening and the two days after, nothing changed. Geralt watched the water, waiting for any hint of what lurked beneath, for any clue what had become of the family members two weeks prior. Mostly when Jaskier wound his way down the deer trail, Geralt knelt a short distance from the water, meditating to pass the time. Once, several deer bounded away at Jaskier’s approach, the herd so used to the still witcher that they came to drink regardless of him. Another time Geralt was pacing as he ate cold provisions. He lit no fire, and Jaskier was glad it didn’t storm. They lucked out save for a few sprinkles on a crisp morning. 

Each time Geralt spoke little and Jaskier left with few words passed between them. He did his best to not be hurt by it. He would be thrilled if the witcher showed more favor to his company, but…

That was neither here nor there.

Today, Geralt was restless. Jaskier never approached too near the water. The witcher bristled and became short with him whenever he tried. This morning Geralt walked away from his place of sentry to approach them. Jaskier remained in the saddle, reigns loose as Geralt stroked Roach’s muzzle, yellow cat eyes soft and resigned.

“I think I owe it to the widow to at least see if I can find the bodies in the ruins,” Geralt murmured. Jaskier wasn’t sure if he spoke to Roach alone or both of them.

“Ruins?” Jaskier lifted himself in the stirrups, as though he could see the white stone looming under the smooth, clear green of the water. “I thought those were just rocks.”

Geralt didn’t look up, focused on stoking down the white on Roach’s forehead. “No. It’s a structure. I don’t know how deep it goes, or if there’s any way in. At least not from the shore.”

Which meant he intended to swim in there and search. Jaskier’s stomach churned.

_Be careful_ , he wanted to say. _You know you don’t have to. I’m sure I can convince the villagers to just mark this pond as forbidden and we can check on it another year._ But of course he didn’t say so. Instead, he smiled, showing he had full confidence in the witcher’s skills. “Excellent! I should see you for lunch, then?”

Geralt had nodded without expression, patting Roach’s neck firmly before walking back toward the water. Per usual, there was no wave or word of farewell. 

Jaskier returned with Roach and gave the news to the apprehensive families. He waited for Geralt to walk down the road to the farmstead with the saddlebag over his strong shoulder, bearing news or simple disappointment. 

He didn’t show. 

Jaskier walked from house to house, to the road, to the woman’s farmstead. He sat on a bench by stalks of honeysuckle in the sun, watching puffy clouds drift overhead while he attempted to compose something galvanizing the bravery of Geralt’s vigil over the pond. He couldn’t concentrate. The sun slipped well past its zenith, slowly arcing for the tree-line, and he _worried_.

Hours before night, he saddled Roach again. _It’ll be nice to greet him on the road so he doesn’t have to walk,_ he told himself. _A pleasing gesture from one friend to another. Not a vouch of incompetence._ Surely Geralt wouldn’t be irritated by that. 

He rode the hour and a half on the trail without running into the witcher. _Maybe I passed him somehow. Goodness knows the man will go off-path in search of herbs every chance he gets._ Roach snuffed and snorted, as though sensing his tension. He patted her neck, but her ears remained either tersely up or laying back as they wove down the narrow deer trail. 

The still green water came into view. The birds were uncharacteristically quiet. Geralt was nowhere in sight. 

Jaskier’s heartbeat increased. He took several breaths before he dismounted and wrapped Roach’s reins around a branch before approaching where Geralt usually knelt. More dread surged up his throat to tighten his airway. 

Geralt’s armor, the saddlebag, an empty scabbard, and his sheathed steel sword lay in an arranged pile. Even his boots with his woolen socks tucked into them were standing by for their owner.

_Maybe-maybe he’s just still swimming and searching in the water! Yes, that must be it!_

Geralt had made it clear that Jaskier was to stay away from the water, but this was an urgent matter! If he didn’t confirm Geralt was swimming about, alive and well, he might panic. 

He didn’t see Geralt. Jaskier stood on the shore, breaths quick from his open mouth. The water held clouds of dust where it’d been disturbed, silt slow to sink back into clear rest. The shore near the trail scored deep gouges, reeds pried up and deep finger tracks furrowed through the thick clay. Jaskier’s eyes skipped about the white stone, still and ghostly beneath the water, afraid one form might be a pale witcher body. But there were only rocks, dark tree branches, underwater reeds, a pod of minnows, and nothing else. 

“Geralt?” Jaskier tried. He forced his bottom lip to cease its trembling, putting lung and diaphragm into his next call. “ _GERALT! _”__

__He called again and again, but no one answered._ _


	4. Rouse, Revive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains two of the word prompts, Rouse and Revive. The third prompt word will feature in next chapter, which I should have up sometime on Sunday.

Calm rippled through him and held him. 

He hadn’t been this at peace since… He didn’t remember. Worry faded. Pain disappeared. He remained disconnected in the breathless black. Time lengthened from his last heartbeat. 

_Wake!_

He didn’t have enough thought to consider the insistent voice, his comprehension faint. He couldn’t feel his body, but saw no reason to concern himself with that. 

The voice thought otherwise. 

_Wake up, being!_ Something thumped and vibrated. _You will breathe!_

 _Breathe?_ More thumping. It rippled dully through him, making Geralt’s dark world quake. He could ignore it, _would_ ignore it, sink and fade. 

The thumping and jolts became more unrelenting and violent. They failed to rouse him and stopped. 

The voice increased. Its will cut through his oxygen-starved mind. _HOW DO I GET YOU TO BREATHE?_ Again his dark world rattled, and this time he heard the _clack_ of his teeth jarring together. 

_YOU WILL NOT DIE UNTIL I SAY._

Something invaded his mouth and pushed into his throat. 

Geralt’s heart startled in his chest. Consciousness bolted back to him, revived in one alarmed jolt, and life _hurt_. His lungs struggled and burned. His chest compressed with attempts to breathe, as though it could suck his ribs down in the fight for air. His closed throat may have opened that instant to allow a precious inhale, but a slipper, sliding appendage filled his esophagus. The same second he woke, his stomach heaved violently, the nausea forcing fluid against the intrusion. 

The spongy limb withdrew from his throat. Watery vomit came with it. The creature dropped him in shallow water. Geralt writhed onto his side. Water, saliva, and blood slid off his lip. Finally he gurgled in a breath, half moisture that bubbled in his raw lungs, and he coughed. 

Once he coughed, he couldn’t stop, dragging in ragged breaths between each spasm. 

_Ah, that worked._

Geralt wanted to tell the voice in his head that it _didn’t_ work. All it did was make him puke. His throat ached from the intrusion, his lungs felt shredded, and his head encompassed a hot smear of pain behind his eye, spiking with each cough that wracked his frame. He hacked so hard he retched repeatedly until dry heaving, hovered close to unconsciousness during the most seizing bouts. His beaten body hurt wherever the numbness had lifted. He’d bitten his tongue, coppery flavor coating his mouth, and he couldn’t tell if the creature had blinded him or the place lacked light.

All the while, the hungry creature loomed. Tentacles shifted and curled lazily atop his soaked white while Geralt lay gasping, chilled and shuddering. 

Once roused from death, Geralt had no intention of returning to the state. Not because he wasn’t ready. That taunting peace would be his someday. Right now, there was work to do. 

First, his body. He flexed slowly. His arm, knee, and cheek hurt on one side, the skin scraped, likely from a fall. His leg and parts of his back were numb, but even now he could feel that receding. Nothing seemed broken. He could still move. His senses piqued as he attempted to catch his breath, regaining his bearings past the migraine.

Second, his surroundings. Small, energetic ripples drifted out from his chest where his medallion continued to dance. Distant water rushed, splashing down steep stone and filling his ears with its faint white noise. Drops plummeted into deep pools, their sporadic _ploinks_ echoing in a large space. The stone under him had brittle pieces, a man made flooring that had warped and broken apart long ago, eroded away by the water. Past the blood in his mouth he smelled the deep, earthy damp, death, and the faint scent of the sea. 

Third, the fight at hand. His attention turned to the monster, squinting his throbbing eye shut against the phosphenes scarring his vision. Only then did he see the dim glow of its eyes and the faintly illuminated tentilla floating around it. The monster looked an ethereal phantom, glimpses of bone-white surface gleaming in the luminescent strands. 

_Marvelous. You’re already recovering from my nerve toxins._

The large, dim blue saucer turned, eyeing him. Geralt figured the monster could see in the dark far better than he, especially without a cat potion. He attempted to discern its shape in the weak lights that moved in slow waves atop its restless limbs that turned in the water. The vague glimpses of the pale body revealed a tall, blunt head, featureless pale eyes set on opposite sides. There were no features defining where head ended and neck began, a smooth elongation into an eel-like body easily twice as long as he was tall. No obvious orifices broke the smooth surface of its moist flesh aside from the eyes and a thin line as long as his forearm that lined its neck. It perched over him like a grotesque seal or poised snake, held aloft by the thicker, supple limbs that split into thin tentacles. He couldn’t be sure how many. Ten, twelve on each side? 

_My last potential meal bled inside its mind before I could envelope it._ Geralt pressed his forehead against stone and the few inches of water, wheezing. He flinched as a tentacle tip slid on his scraped cheek. _The one before died of shock from my touch._

The long tentacles were strong, some half as long as the creature itself and as thick as his wrist before they tapered to the size of his little finger. Even the smallest and shortest still stretched as long as his arm. Those, though, didn’t concern him nearly as much as the tentilla drifting after the squirming limbs. The glassy fronds seemed fragile, thin wisps a hand-span long spaced every few inches along the sides of the slithering appendages. Geralt categorized them as the deadliest weapon this creature possessed.

 _The littlest one drowned. My last meal before was a pittance, barely enough to revive me from_ eons _of starvation._

 _Toxin_ the creature had voiced mentally. Geralt had been on ships with sailors scored by squiggly scars from jellyfish. There were stories of tiny white blobs that could kill a man, and other jellies with manes longer than three men, capturing anything foolish enough to brush the floating tangle drifting from the gelatinous body. 

Those threads would be much harder to fight, especially since they held worse properties than mere venom. 

_You are much stronger, durable compared to those feeble creatures. Destiny has imprinted upon you deeply. You will sustain me for_ centuries, _being_.

The tentacle on his cheek turned, a more textured surface exploring under his jaw and lifting his chin. Geralt panted, tossing his head away from the touch. The tentacle slipped, but quickly reclaimed his jaw with two limbs, gripping harder. The other tentacles swam through the surrounding water. They patted at his bare feet, circled his ankle, wound atop his hip and slid over his ribs and shoulder. 

Geralt’s fingertips scraped through water and stone, stomach rolling with revulsion. The glowing tentilla prodded at his skin, like ethereal butterfly proboscis seeking nectar, whisper light, and he shivered from far more than cold at the subtle intrusion against his senses. He shifted the hand under him palm down. His breaths remained hard, a weak numbness heavy in his muscles. He couldn’t guess what became of his silver sword. He could barely see.

But he was a witcher, and this would be far from the last monster to think him an easy meal. 

_Now as I have revived you, you shall revive me._

He waited until the tentacles wound further around him, pulling him upright. The pale glimmer of enormous eyes floated before him in the dark. 

_Come now. We shall…_

Geralt narrowed his eyes. He thrust his hand forward, mind narrowed on Will and Intent. Magic sang down his arm. Sparks flashed blinding to his fingertips as he flicked the trinagular symbol into the air. 

_**“Igni!”** _

The magic swelled, instantly ready to unleash an inferno into the creature’s face. Heat sizzled up his wrist. The monster’s tall head flinched from the light, tentacles and silvery tentilla flying upward. Then…

…The sign sputtered out. 

Geralt stared at the blackness, chest heaving. Phantom sparks from his snuffed magic still silently exploded in his eyes. His head ached; his stomach turned. Pin pricks stung at his wrist. 

The tentilla were the first thing he could see, bright now where they stuck into seven points of his wrist and hand. The larger tentacle they swam from wrapped around his trembling wrist, squeezing tightly.

 _Such a fighter,_ the monster murmured in his head, but not in admiration. It possessed the sense of someone impressed at a rabbit still kicking in its snare.

Geralt cursed and jerked back. The tentacles wrapped up both of his arms. The tentilla stung as they pricked past his skin, tentacles yanking him upright. 

_But your magic is just part of your flavor._ The creature loomed close, mind slavering. _I am a creature of the woven order. Your gestures of Chaos will never—_

“ _Fuck you_.” Geralt head-butted the spongy head. 

A painful, psionic shriek burst in his mind. Tentacles whipped and writhed. One wrapped hard around his head. 

He snarled, twisted and _bit_.

Like many creatures, the monster attempted to shake the source of its pain off. The pitched shriek stabbed a steady spike in Geralt’s mind. He bit harder, spongy flesh squelching as his teeth closed together, separated only by thin, slippery skin. Cold, metallic fluid filled his mouth. 

At last the creature untangled from him. It lifted him and slammed him down. Agony bust in his head from the hard jolt. Black sparks swam through his vision.

 _You should not have done that!_ the creature promised. Both tentacled limbs whipped forward, the myriad of tentacles squeezing under him, around him. They cinched tight. Breath already knocked from him, he couldn’t breathe, squeezed and squeezed. He suffocated while the mind bore down on him, scraping through his brain savagely.

The memory swallowed him. 

_He lay on his cot, stared at his pale, thin hand where it trembled on the dusty stone floor. Faint lines marked the stone to his fingertips. Dark red outlined the edges of his abused fingernails. Hot and cold whipped through his sweating body. He burned. He froze. He struggled to breathe past the torturous agony. His fingers curled further, scraped. Red etched on the floor in their wake._

_The mutations ate him alive, blistered his veins as they devoured the humanity left in his body. Waves of unbearable agony made him rock, writhe, stretch and curl with no relief._

Too much, _he thought again with his young self._ Too much! I can’t…! __

_In the end, he couldn’t be sure which screams were his or those dying around him._

The darkness crushed him unconscious, but the peace of dying never came.

~~~

Jaskier broke free of the water, voice whistling in his desperate gasp. He tread for a moment, eyes wide as he stared at the pale morning sky. His limbs were worn from swimming, his lungs laboring from his repeated dives. Still after only a moment, he pulled in quick breaths, then forced himself under again, kicking towards the bottom once more.

His ears ached from the pressure of groping among the deepest points. He searched around the ancient stone structure, attempted to find any entrance. Even now he feared the grasp of some monster, but the fear of not finding Geralt scared him far more, so his fingers skimmed and prodded in niches and crannies, trying to find where his lost witcher might have disappeared to. 

The faint light glinted in the still settling murk. Jaskier pulled himself through the water toward the glimmer. A wide slab of stone lay flat just beside the rise of a time-misshapen dome. Mossy algae tickled at his knuckles as he reached. 

A hot slice of pain opened his palm. Bubbling air escaped Jaskier as he jerked his hand back. Red clouded the water in front of him. Cautious but determined, he reached again, heart beating rapidly. 

He sputtered to the surface and gulped air greedily. A few seconds of recuperating, and he aimed his clumsy kicks toward the shore. 

Roach waited there. Her ears lifted alertly. Her restlessly shifting hooves deeply imprinted the mud where water lapped land. Jaskier slogged up the soft bank, the heavy burden dragging his bleeding hand down. His limbs were rubber, and the bard shook when he finally tripped in the soft mud in the reedy shallows, panting. 

Roach snuffled at his wet hair as Jaskier blinked against streaming water. She nickered low when he failed to acknowledge her. Jaskier reached up with his uncut hand, fumbling at her muzzle. He dragged the heavy metal from the muddy water and pulled it across his lap. Watery rivulets of blood rushed down his forearm to his elbow, dripping red into nearly black silt. 

The silver sword shone in the wan light.

“Oh, Roach,” Jaskier lamented, words squeezed tight in his throat. He tipped his face up at the mare. Grief twisted his features. “What are we going to do?”


	5. Recall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This covers the word prompt Recall. And yes, Geralt is in deep trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some content warning here: there are dead bodies, a canon-inspired attempted assault (not detailed, but be forewarned), and more orifice invading. There is also a lot of jumping back and forth between reality and memory.
> 
> The lullaby sang is _"Lullaby of Woe_ " as heard in the Witcher 3 OST (A Night to Remember song). You can hear it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFUsPfuwjpw) or watch the trailer it features in [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehjJ614QfeM)
> 
> P.S.! I realized I left out an important feature! I've added bits of Geralt's medallion in this chapter and previous ones.

Geralt woke up being dragged by his feet through shallow water. Cold sank into his cramping body. Broken stone scraped under his shoulders. His head pounded a nauseating drumbeat behind his eyes. His limbs seemed full of sand, limp and heavy. His hands trailed in the water, half floating, half dragging. A strange empty sensation hugged his neck.

He couldn’t remember where he was at first. 

A slosh at his feet, and he fell off the underwater ledge. Water rolled over him. Geralt flapped his hands weakly, struggled to get his chin above to sputter. His lungs still ached. Soreness rippled through his body. He lifted his face to see what towed him through the water. 

The faint glow around his calves reminded him. The tentacles tightened around his ankles. 

_Damn._ He let his head sink back to float in the water, drifting where the monster dragged him, too worn to attempt fighting. Whenever water surged over his face, he spit it out, hands struggling to push himself higher. Fluid trickled freely down his nose and throat. His cramped stomach complained at its presence. 

The creature moved smoothly through the water, much more at home in it than Geralt. A pause in its swimming, and he barely pulled in half a breath before it plunged underneath. Chilly pressure encapsulated him. Thankfully, it didn’t last long. The creature dipped beneath a barrier he bumped his forehead against before pulling him upward. He coughed and gasped in air feebly while appendages wrapped around him and pulled him over another ledge. 

The monster touched and tapped at him until he stopped coughing. Satisfied, it wrapped a few limbs down his right wrist and arm and dragged him along the smooth, intact floor. 

Geralt knew he should fight, should try to bite and grab and free himself. Pain didn’t stop him. Yet, even without his armor, he weighed so _heavy_. His brain felt too large for his skull, and fever flashes of hot and cold swept through him in waves. His body allowed itself to be dragged, stiff and uncoordinated, the exhausted prey in a much stronger predator’s grip. No matter how much he willed himself to kick and struggle, his overwrought nerves wouldn’t obey, and the panic and adrenaline wouldn’t come. 

This was how most things lost their fight. Exhaustion. Predators would just grip until the prey couldn’t fight anymore before moving in for the kill. Geralt knew death was bound to get him eventually, but a quick end would have been preferable to this helpless fatigue.

He just needed Jaskier to listen to him and stay away. Take care of Roach. Get his things to Kaer Morhen, maybe his medallion...

The empty sensation on his neck struck him. Where was his medallion? He lifted a weak hand to his chest, patting for it, but instead of familiar link and silver edges, his fingertips found nothing but his shirt.

 _I rid you of it,_ the monster informed him in his head. _Not easily, but it was a nasty thing._

It didn't like silver. And now he had nothing silver left on his person. Geralt's hand went slack, slipping back into the water.

A faint green glow seeped into his vision. Bioluminescent fungi scattered in pockets of the craggy stone walls. Another large room, but the rush of descending water was absent, and the drops of water far less frequent. The smell of death cloyed. Human, he identified numbly, each in various states of decay. Salt tickled his nose, but not like the sea. This salt water was still and stagnant, lacked the richness of life and death the ocean held. 

His released arm fell to the floor with a wet slap of his sleeve. Geralt dazedly turned his head, picking out shapes in gloom and glow. The chamber still held most of its rectangular shape. The arched ceiling hovered cracked and misshapen above. A wide staircase ascended up the wall and ended abruptly in stone. Pillars in various states of deterioration split the chamber. The salt water lay just beyond them in gentle slopes and rectangular niches. The fungi glowed much richer in its shallows. It all ended a distance away in natural, rough stone. The roughly rounded semi-circle of wall stood in the water’s depth in thick stalagmites and stalactites, like stone teeth that bit the chamber away from the world it might have once connected to. 

_A dock?_

A soft skitter had him turning his head the other way. 

_Oh… At least I found the bodies._

In the corner next to the wall the creature had pulled him under, the bodies were half sunk in the shallows of the saltless water and a bed of bones. Crustaceans, insects, and a few rodents fed from them, scavenging undisturbed. Most of the flesh had already turned to dark liquid, skin and hair plastered on sticky skeletons. But even with microorganisms and small scavengers assisting with the decomposition, their ragged, stained clothes remained mostly intact. 

The fourth, oldest body lay just under the smallest. It bothered him, and he attempted to figure out why with his aching brain. He had thought the fourth person the monster mentioned would be much more decomposed. The man wasn’t. Negligible differences in its ragged, melting flesh marked it as dead longer than the boy and girl. 

“Not eaten,” he mumbled to himself absently. This monster did not devour humans physically for sustenance, it seemed. He stared at the man’s rotten remains. “Not missing. Traveler?”

 _The last meal?_ the monster inquired to his thoughts. A quiet splash and waves lapping alerted him that the creature had sunk into the salt water. Its silent note of relief echoed in his mind. Geralt made a note of that as well—it was natural to salt water, not fresh water. _A pitiful taste and flavor, but fortuitous. It brought the two younger ones, then the older relative, and, at last, a true meal in you, being._

Tentacles dripping with brine water slithered up to him and circled his upper arms. The creature dragged him head first toward itself. 

Geralt kicked weakly, but his bare heels and feet only scraped on stone ineffectively. Why had no one in the village noted a fourth was missing?

 _You needn’t worry for it,_ the creature assured in his mind. _It was barely a morsel with little effect on the world. Its mate is barren, it did nothing to impress any youths, and it would have killed and saved none. Its fate was to die of blood poisoning from splinters within the next decade._

The monster pulled him down the slope, saltwater lapping up his waist. Geralt resisted, but it pulled him sitting up as though he were no more than a rusty-hinged puppet. 

_Instead it died a king, full of rich food and fawning mates about it._ Geralt’s back rest against its spongy body. He ignored the large, solid blue eye looming in his peripheral. _He handed me his fate so easily, but it nourished little. You are so much more._

“Get fucked.” Geralt leaned forward. Tentacles wrapped around his forearms thickly, yanking him back against the long body. His hands clenched and unclenched in front of his shoulders ineffectively.

_You will hand me your fate as well._

He would not. He grit his teeth, glaring. 

_You will. You will give me everything._

Geralt tugged his leg up when he felt slithering over his thigh. _Fucking parasite!_

Indignation seared at him. _I am no parasite!_ Just as swiftly, the anger disappeared to craving, gentling like a cat that licked at a baby rodent before devouring it. _I give in return, being. In the end, you will choose to give me everything._

The creature’s weight pushed against his back, the limbs lifting like giant hands. The tentacles closed around him, sliding around him like a multitude of constricting snakes. He felt the sharp sting of tentilla sliding under his skin. “Won’t…”

 _You will. After all, do you truly wish to keep…_ —

— _A stone hit him._

Geralt blinked. Light, sound, and color blared. He stood stupefied, his sensitive ears filled with the angry cries of people, the smell of human sweat, fear, and anger. Blood sliced through it. It’s familiar copper colored his hands. Another rock smacked solidly into his shoulder, quickly following by more swift stones, one clipping his jaw dangerously as he retreated a step.

_…this?_

Geralt’s gaze whipped about. _Blaviken._ Another rock, human faces twisted in anger. He raised his forearm to ward a stone away from his face. Another pelted his leg, his elbow. Angry villagers quickly scooped up more to throw, screaming at him for his murders.

 _Charming creatures,_ the monster commented dryly in his mind. 

“They didn’t know!” Geralt snarled out of his past self’s mouth. He hastened his retreat, eager to be away from the accusations and hateful glares. 

_It doesn’t matter how many you save, being,_ the monster stated. _You may want to be a hero, but in everyone’s storybook, you are a monster, little better than what they hire you to kill._

Geralt fled, feeling every sting of the hurled stones as he did then. It wasn’t until he was atop the old Roach, this one long gone, that the monster shifted memories on him. 

He guided his horse into a village to look for hunts. He was hungry, his armor in poor shape. The season had not treated him well. The winter had clung to the land unseasonably late, and the rain had drowned several crops in the spring. Summer had been short, and Autumn brought an early frost. The monsters had still been plentiful, but coin was short. 

He swallowed down his hunger, careful not to let his eyes stray to the man nibbling at a hard biscuit in a stool surrounded by his whittling shavings. The man gave him a hard glare, and the witcher tucked his chin down so his hood covered his yellow eyes better and hoped his hair hadn’t come loose and forward. Doing his best to shut out smells of cooking, he guided Roach along the road. Mist slunk along the fields on either side on empty fields. Most of the townsfolk had already turned in for the evening. He hoped to find a warm niche to sleep, if anyone wouldn’t mind giving a stranger hospitality.

In the scattered houses, he found the notice board and dismounted. Cold mud squelched into the holes of his boots. It didn’t matter. His socks were already a loss. He put his gloved hand against the board, searching for official notices or news of a possible monster in the gossip.

“ _Birds are silent for the night, cows turn in as daylight dies._ ”

Geralt lifted his weary gaze from the notice board, listening to the soft woman’s falsetto and the flat keys of children following along to the lullaby. 

“ _But one soul lies anxious wide awake, fearing all manner of ghouls, hags, and wraiths._ ”

Hand tight on the reins, he led the horse toward the sound, along a rickety fence. 

“ _My dear dolly Polly, shut your eyes. Lie still, lie silent, utter no cries._ ”

Between the houses a young woman sat next to a kettle over an outside fire, stirring with a long ladle. Two children squatted near, attentively singing along. 

“ _As the witcher, brave and bold, paid in coin of gold._ ” The woman leaned forward, tapping each child’s nose. “ _He’ll chop and slice you, cut and dice you. Eat. You. Up whole._ ” One child giggled as the woman crooked her fingers like claws over them. “ _Eat… You… Whooole._ ”

Geralt stared. The boy laughed and the girl squealed as the woman used her ‘claws’ to tickle at her. She landed on her butt, coming up laughing and intent on running. She stopped with a gasp at the sight of him. 

His eyes must have been visible in the shade of his hood. The mother was out of her seat immediately, leaving the pot to usher her children into the side door. 

“Mum,” the girl cried tearfully. 

She hushed them, whispering, but not too quiet for him to hear. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Inside, now. Be quiet.” 

Geralt listened to the bolt lock. He stood there for a long moment before leading his horse away from the village.

 _”For the witcher, heartless, cold”_. Geralt startled. He’d forgotten he wasn’t really there. It was a memory. The monster continued in his mind. _Is that how the first part of the song goes?_

He stared around at the dreary memory, as though he might see the creature’s eye hovering over his shoulder or its tentacles in his peripheral, around his wrists. “Yeah.” 

_There are many recollections in here where your chest feels strange, like a deep injury that doesn’t leave._

_Geralt turned his head angrily_ —

—And his motion met resistance. A tentacle had strapped firmly over his forehead, so he only managed a small jerk. 

_You wish to keep being a nightmare for their young? Ah, but it isn’t just the young, was it?_

Another flash in his head, and it threw him into memory after memory. The smell of fear. The glares. Men calling to hide the women and children as he rode into town. “Heartless”, “monster”, “freak”, “mutant bastard”, and worse were hurled at him or muttered darkly behind his back. He had too many memories of innkeepers yelling at him to leave and slamming the door in his face. Villagers had told him to keep riding, hostile. Madame’s had ushered him out, saying their girls were clean and did not sleep with vermin. Drunks had outright attacked him while he attempted to get a drink. Deceitful humans had sent him into situations, hoping he’d die, or sometimes they were brave enough to attempt an ambush on his way back from a contract. 

If they killed him, they wouldn’t have to pay him. To them it wouldn’t be murder. He was just a witcher.

There were so many instances to recall. In his later years, he mostly remained hard and indifferent, embittered. Other times angered him. Sometimes he’d gently reminded himself people feared what they didn’t understand. Still more often than not, the monster was right; it made his chest hurt. 

After so many jarred instances of one memory to the next, he forgot they were only memories. He relived them, feeling as he did then, going through the same motions he did then. He had a sense that something wasn’t right, but so enmeshed in the happenings, he couldn’t figure out what. 

Now men cried in fear and fled into the woods. Geralt stood over a girl, barely a young woman, disheveled on the ground. Her father had fled with her would-be attackers, abandoning her at his feet. A man lay dead between them. His blood had sprinkled a stripe of red over her young face. Geralt, fresh on the path, foolish, soft-hearted, leaned forward and reached a gloved hand to help her up, to assure her she was safe now. 

She stared up at him, ashen and frozen in terror. The men had not terrified her like this. This fear was for the witcher reaching for her. 

She vomited and fainted, and it hit his heart like a hammer.

 _Didn’t you just save it from an awful fate?_

Geralt startled, bloodied sword snapping upward. Confusion clouded his memory as he searched for the voice. 

_You came to this “Path” hoping to be a hero, someone who saved others. Instead, you terrified this being more than its attackers ever could._

He remembered now. This wasn’t real. He wasn’t here in a fresh spring season filled with the scent of grass, horse, human, blood, and vomit. 

“They don’t understand…” he argued weakly, staring at the girl who’d fainted in shock. 

_They seem to understand very well._ When Geralt said nothing, the monster continued. _It’s a rather loveless profession, isn’t it? One where you’re a tool for manipulation and use. You wish to keep this?_

He clenched his eyes shut, head flinching downward at the prodding sensation in his mind. “Don’t.”

But his protest counted for nothing as the monster cast him back into his memories. 

He recalled all too vividly every time Yennefer dismissed him, how the other sorceress’ used him. The disdain of nobility was obvious, often stated outright, when they to hire a witcher to take out some pest. Geralt forgot again they were only memories, suffering through the sensations. 

The callous mages treated him little better than an animal. As a young teen, his eyes already slit-pupiled and his bones still aching with their changes, mages prodded at him and made notes. Sickness rolled up his gut when they agreed they would subject him to further experiments, more than the others. 

_Why?_ he’d wanted to ask, protest. But Vesemir, the closest thing to a father he had, only set a stern hand on his shoulder, and there was no argument. 

He tried to understand the old wolf’s distance with his charges. More than half of them would die, and who could go through the heartbreak of losing so many of their wards and function still? Yet it hurt, and he wondered if maybe witchers really didn’t have hearts. Would he become as heartless as well? 

He didn’t, as much as he tried to be at times. He wished it were so often enough, because humanity seemed intent on dishing him out heartache after heartache. A dark sun princess forced his hand in her slaying, and he’d had to defend her body from the mage who wanted to dissect her. He’d allowed himself to become too attached, paying the cost and reminded why witchers shouldn’t love, shouldn’t get too involved.

But there were other instances...

“ _Toss a coin to your witcher, oh valley of plenty!_ ”

Geralt sheltered in the memory. He sat at the edge of the small crowd, watching Jaskier perform while he remained detached from the warmth of cheerful villagers as the bard commanded everyone’s attention. 

Jaskier’s lack of fear toward him confused Geralt. The bard wandered after him with little means of self-preservation. Geralt had taken to making sure the bard didn’t suffer on the road too badly, sharing his gear and provisions. The bard was… company. Even good company.

These memories possessed a cutting edge on one side. It reminded him how lonely he was. How he had so few friends. How normally the world wasn’t always so hostile, just that he was an exception. Jaskier opened up so many wounds he thought had scabbed over, but soothed them as well. Geralt wondered when the other foot would fall.

The voice in his head interrupted his thoughts. _Your herald, rich from your story and accomplishments._

Geralt’s throat vibrated with an angry sound. The monster. Of course. How could he have forgotten again? “Don’t you dare fucking touch him.”

_He may not care enough to look for you. I suppose we’ll see just how strong his bonds truly are. You doubt them, just as you doubt them with the sorceress._

“Fuck off.” 

_You’re angry because you know I’m correct. This is the life fate has woven for you, and it will weave more pain for you in the future. You owe Destiny nothing for what it’s wrought._

“It’s still _mine_ ,” he argued. 

_Not of your choosing. It was chosen for you. You had no say in this matter. But… If you could choose, what would you have your life be?_

He didn’t know. He struggled, the question pressing. _He looked to the side_ —

—The big, blank blue eye remained over his shoulder, watching him. Time had passed, but like before, not as much as experienced in his memories. His mouth wasn’t dry in thirst, but he was cold, the water turning his legs and lower back stiff with its chill. Everywhere he ached and little stings of tentilla pushed in his skin. The tentacles wrapped about him completely, and he wasn’t sure he could move even if he marshaled the strength to try. 

He stared numbly from the eye to where his hand hung limply from the circling tentacle. The tentilla glowed brighter where they needled into his hand. 

_Well?_

It held his head too tightly for him to shake it, so he settled for thinking lamely back. _I don’t know._

_Challenging. Most creatures I bargain with have an idea of what they want. You, I will have to guess with what I know. Let us see what I can offer you._

Geralt closed his eyes. _There’s nothing you can offer me._

The monster paid his refusal no mind. Behind his head a tentacle tip wound into the tie holding his hair in place, pulling on it until it snapped and allowed his hair to tumble free. He twitched, opening his eyes a sliver. The glow increased around his head, and he could see tentilla waving at his peripheral. _Hundreds_ of them. 

The strength he failed to summon earlier came with panic. He struggled, jerked, tried to throw his weight. The tentacles tightened to the point of cutting off circulation. The tentilla that emerged from the opening line in the creature’s neck waved and brushed him like a giant anemone. Breathing hard, he flinched from the multiple touches on his face, through his hair, then clenched his teeth as hundreds of them slipped under his skin, up his nose, inside his lips, around his eyes. He couldn’t escape them, couldn’t thrash hard enough. 

He stilled only when someone appeared in front of him. A pale humanesque woman leaned toward him, glowing, realer than anything else seemed to be with her pale, pale blue eyes. The touch on his cheek warmed his cold skin. “ _Shh… You don’t have to fight anymore. Let me show you what can be._ ”

He _did_ have to fight. He snarled, shaking with tension as he tried to muscle his way out. His body was turning numb. New pain bloomed in his head. He couldn’t—

—He was on the road. 

Had he been somewhere else? 

No. He’d just got done climbing the winding trail of the hill. He still needed to catch his breath. The rich taste of sweet apple still lay on his tongue. The bucket weighed his small hand down heavily, his whole short frame leaning with it. He turned in place. Sunlight dappled through the leaves, wind rustling the limbs. 

“Ma?” Where was the cart? Geralt searched about for it, a jolt of panic in his childish mind. Mother wouldn’t leave him! She must just be somewhere…His mother said she needed water, she’d said… “Ma!”

“Here, Geralt.” 

He turned, and she sat there on the cart, looking like a goddess with smooth red hair and a porcelain face. He wasn’t sure how he could have missed her and the horses. He hurried to the cart, beaming. 

“I got the water!”

“That’s my good, brave boy.” She leaned down, taking the heavy container from him. She dipped a ladle in it and drank. He waited, bouncing in place. 

“Do you feel better now?” he asked. 

“I do. Do you want to ride up front in the seat with me, now?”

Her slender hand reached down. Geralt hesitated, looking from her offered hand down the road. There was something he needed to remember, but he couldn’t recall… Wasn’t there supposed to be a man here? Someone in armor with yellow eyes? Who were they? It seemed important…

“Geralt,” his mother prompted.

He started from his hazy memory, and it disappeared like mist in summer. He took her hand, happy she helped him up and took the seat next to her. She hadn’t let him ride up front all this trip, and he felt privileged and proud as he leaned against her and watched her take up the reins once more, clucking at the horses. 

They went back the way they’d come. Geralt couldn’t help but look over his shoulder at the road, still thinking he’d see someone there. 

But it was empty.


	6. Energizing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt word "Energizing". Lots of in and out of reality in this chapter. Lots of Geralt whump.

_Always say no._

The voice came often, older and gruffer in his head, a memory he couldn’t put time or place to but remained steely hard in his mind. 

_No matter what it offers, say no._

Geralt helped his mother around the camp, fetching water, dragging dead tree limbs over and chopping them with his hatchet energetically. He was older and stronger now, and they traveled the Northern Kingdom while she pedaled her healing trade. He knew nearly all the herbs now, and he found the act of harvesting from the roadside relaxing and familiar. 

_It’s learned to create familiar things for you. It knows if things are too unfamiliar it will jar too much, and you’ll wake up._

He listened to the warnings in his mind. They rang even truer when something struck a wrong note. Like when he could only swing sticks when he remembered heavy steel in his hands. When he had soft, sweet pastries to eat as often as he wished and remembered hard biscuits. When his mother told him not to gather poisonous plants, and he knew he _used_ some of those plants somehow. He tried to place the wrongness, often circling near the answer, but something would distract him and he’d forget.

_That’s what it does. It keeps figuring out how to trick me so I don’t remember that this isn’t real._

Young Geralt didn’t understand that. Everything seemed very real, so detailed, every sound, smell, taste, and texture vivid. Yet his gut agreed with the bitter, suspicious voice. Something wasn’t right. Things were too…

…nice. 

He watched his mother serenely glide around the camp as he hung yarrow up to dry on the sides of the wagon. Geralt watched her with fascination, the cool porcelain lines of her face, the smooth shimmer of her sunset hair, and the way she held her sleeve back from her delicate wrist as she stirred the stew and added herbs to the pot. The savory scent wafted as the gravy bubbled around meat and roots. She saw him watching, and smiled at him. 

And he disbelieved. 

He had loved his mother dearly, he knew, but he didn’t remember her smiling at him. This woman had hugged him and kissed his cheek. She’d put her fingertips in his dark curls, both taming and rumpling in equal measure, and the affection and touch made him melt inside, but also set something sharp scraping in his ribs. He both craved and rejected it. 

_It knows what we wanted. Long ago._

That time was gone, and he knew it with certainty, the doubt energized when he saw that smile. He picked up a stick from the pile of firewood, watching her as he swung it. Visenna’s attention remained on the fire, not minding his posing as a knight or gallant fighter. This version had only encouraged him. 

Whoever this was, it wasn’t his mother. 

He swiped the stick repeatedly, slicing the air as noisily as possible. 

She didn’t look up. He did it again. And again. When that still earned nothing but her humming, he cracked it against the wagon. 

That did finally cause her to look up, head tilting, sheets of perfect red hair sliding about her shoulders. She smiled. “Still so much energy! Dinner will be ready soon. I’ll make berry cobbler after.”

The tip of his stick dipped to the ground. He could see the dark curls resting on his brow and cheeks. “It’s wrong.” 

“Geralt?”

He shook his head. It made the wrong, dark curls sway. “You… You didn’t give me that name. Vesemir renamed me because I couldn’t remember what I was called before, or if you had given me a name at all.” 

His mother’s figure straightened, giving him an assuring smile. “What are you talking about, darling boy? If you want something—” 

“Wrong.” He glared at her. “That’s not what she’d say!”

“Not what who would—“

_He pointed the stick at her. “She would always say ‘_ stop _’.”_ —

Cold water shocked through his skin. Geralt jerked, cramping muscles tensing, attempting to fight. The tentacles squeezed tighter. Circulation cut off as he struggled. The water slowed him. The energized fight quickly waned, and he panted for breath. His skin stung from the tentilla. Muscles close to the verge of spasms forced him to relax in the monster’s grip further. He flexed his bare feet and let his shoulders slump before the muscles turned into painful knots that wouldn’t release. A sure sign the toxicity in his blood was high. The frigid water didn’t help. 

_You make your fate difficult to craft when what you want is what you will not accept,_ the monster chastised. 

He thought back a vehement curse, eyes flicking to the blank pale, pale blue. He twitched and hissed when the tentilla circling his eyeball squirmed and burned.

_I will adjust your memories for that time to something more familiar._

He managed a scoffing sound. _How is it trading a fate if you’re hiding my original life under falsehoods?_

_I only need to figure out what you want. You want the best fate for you as possible, yes?_

_No, I want to keep_ mine.

_You think that because of ignorance. I will try again._

He must remember to always say no. Geralt felt the tentilla energizing. _He gasped as fire lanced up his nerves—_

— _Grey eyes focused on the foes trying to circle him._

They hopped about to keep him guessing and called loudly. Bruises already scored Geralt’s body, his knuckles skinned. He panted heavily. But he was the last survivor. If he fell, the fortress fell. The prisoners would remain imprisoned. Terribly outnumbered, he stood before the small flag that waved behind him, the token of his final stand. Energized with that thought, he planted his feet and tightened his grip on his “hilt”.

He did his best to remain serious and not grin. He was missing a tooth, and the boys all let him know it looked funny. 

The tallest of the boys pointed his stick at him. “Surrender _or die_!”

Geralt guffawed with the other boys. Eskel had tried to sound deep and stern, but his voice had cracked part way, leaving half his words in a high falsetto. It made Geralt glad his voice hadn’t broken yet. 

_My voice never broke,_ the bitter, older voice thought. During the additional experiments, Geralt had screamed until he lost his voice. The next week when he could speak again, his voice had lowered.

He stopped, confused at his own thoughts. _No, what am I thinking. I’ve never been—_

Lambert’s sharp laugh cut across the square from where he was “held prisoner”. “Blime, Esk, you trying to squeak him to death?”

Eskel’s blue eyes flicked to the prisoner, a flush working up his young, unscarred cheeks. He had stormy blue eyes. Neither his blue nor Lambert’s mischievous cinnamon eyes looked right to Geralt. But they were his friends, familiar, comforting for that, and they let him play despite his richer clothing. The city streets and the Pontar River banks were their kingdom, where they sailed rafts in the shallows, fished together, hunted for frogs, and climbed trees for fruit the deer couldn’t reach. 

“You’re supposed to be dead!” Eskel hollered at Lambert. “Dead people don’t talk!”

Something dark curled in front of his eyes and he swiped at it, startled. Ah, wait. That was his hair, weighed down with sweat. Just like Eskel and Lambert’s eyes, his hair was _wrong_. He reached up and grabbed it. The curls twined dark and thick, _soft_. It was supposed to be straight and coarse. His chest tightened. 

Eskel leaned toward him in concern, play forgotten. “Geralt, hey. What’s wrong?”

His eyes were blue. Blue was _wrong_. His hair was wrong. It was all wrong! 

“Your eyes!” They’d strapped them down and put metal wire around their eyelids to hold them open. He still remembered through his delirium as the needle came closer and closer and being unable to blink. It was _wrong_! His friends were real, but not! _None of this—_

— _Geralt gasped awake again._ His eye still burned. Bound and unable to move reminded him too much of the Grasses, except instead of burning, he froze. A high whine came from his throat.

_Tricky, including them without reminding you of witchers,_ the monster commented. _Yet you notice if they're missing. I’ll have to introduce them younger in your fate. I will try again._

He ground his teeth. He had suffered to become a witcher, to fight monsters like this one. He couldn’t let it win, couldn’t let it do this to someone else. If he couldn’t win, he must keep it occupied, so it didn't seek others out. _I must always say no…_

_Energy swept through the tentilla—_

Again and again, the monster tried. Memories came, memories left, and each time he woke, Geralt struggled less and less, weakening more and more. The toxins taxed his body. He tasted blood in his mouth. The brine water stung his cracked lips and everywhere the tentilla stabbed him. Thirst raged in his throat. He wanted to drink so much he tried to lick the salt water, and only the monster stopped him. His stomach ached increasingly until it disappeared in the all-encompassing pain. 

The creature had yet to fool him utterly, but the time before he recognized the lies from truth lengthened. Deep in his mind, time crawled, years, countless decades passing, and he couldn’t tell how long passed in the painful, real world. His memories and the monster’s false reality smudged and blended together like running paint. Names, places, and some events overlapped, but he always knew the bad things were real and the good things were not. That confused him the further he went, the more he aged, the more good memories tangled with the bad ones that surfaced with the bitter, gruff voice. 

Now among the confusion, the White One came to him in the dreamscape where he couldn’t tell nightmares from memories and asked if he wanted to trade his fate. 

_I must always say no._ Always. He must never fail to remember that.

And every time he said no, the monster tried again. 

But every body and mind had its limits, and Geralt’s could tell even in his delirium he was at the threshold of his. As the landscape warped strange and fuzzy around him, he knew something was slipping. Had he been awake all this time? How long could a witcher go without sleep? Humans couldn’t for long before the madness killed them. 

Those thoughts evaporated among the created environment that waved like heat waves lapped over the horizon. He could still smell rosemary, honeysuckle, and apple tree blossoms. The orchard’s pale petals shimmered on the breeze as they fell. 

Geralt, a young man now, sat in a garden, back against the manor’s wall where the sun could warm him. The bees buzzed, birds sang. His focus kept slipping, the sounds slowing to resonate deep, strange vibrations, or he thought he heard strange whispers. Hallucinations, he knew. The sunlight sliced too white briefly before dimming to gray. The flowers became a blur of color before struggling into focus once more.

It didn’t alarm him. The serenity of the place kept him captivated. A book lay mostly forgotten on his lap. _The Tales of Vesemir the Monster Slayer_ , a favorite, and a trick, he realized, so he never tried to think of the real Vesemir. Easier to paint him as an adored hero character than the harsh father figure he had been. A gentle breeze played with the tress of his loose hair. It lay dark and soft over his shoulder. He’d become used to it, as well as the tan of his skin and the lack of scars.

A woman walked in the orchard, leading a chestnut mare with white markings. Like him, her hair lay in long raven waves. She wore black and white, and striking purple eyes cast his way, full heart lips turning up in a smile that made his heartbeat flutter.

Or maybe that was a failing of his body.

“She’s very beautiful.” 

Geralt didn’t startle or turn to look at the White One seated next to him, absent one second and there the next. “Yes,” he agreed. 

“Do you want your fate to be with her?”

_Always say no. You must always say no._ “No.” 

The White One moved in his periphery, but he couldn’t focus. It took too much effort to stare where Yennefer walked Roach through the orchard. “Last time you at least considered.” 

“Last time I had to remember that she wasn’t real.”

“She’s as real here as she is anywhere. Reality is everything your brain allows you to experience. This is real, because you are experiencing this, from the feel of the pages under your fingertips to the rosemary you smell.”

“She isn’t real here. Like everyone here, she’s a figment, not an actual person.” They’d had this argument before. Many times. He wanted to sleep. How long had it been since he’d really slept? 

“You’ve no proof anything or anyone is more real from one realm to another,” the White One (no, _the Monster_ ) explained patiently. “The only person you can know is real is yourself.”

The sky dimmed again, the sun a pale gray. Geralt’s head ached, a distant sensation becoming worse as he tried to focus on Yennefer. Everything turned as black and white as her chosen wardrobe now. “But I know for certain she’s not here.”

“You’re never really certain she’s anywhere, let alone real.”

“The chances of her being real outside of here are better.” He rubbed at his forehead, exhausted. “I know because bad things happen out there.” 

The blank blue eyes considered him. “Perhaps eventually, you will not choose the bad.” 

Geralt tipped his head back against the manor wall. The sky darkened, like a freshly dipped quill spreading ink the longer it rested against paper. There weren’t any stars. Strange. “How long has it been?” He couldn’t summon the energy to snap or snarl the question like he often did, just passively ask. 

“Almost too long.” 

Almost…? Geralt cracked a smile. “Ah. I’m dying, aren’t I?”

The White One stood, hand out. “You don’t need to. I’ll give you a new fate, a better one, where you can rest and drink and love how you wish.”

Rest sounded so good, but he smirked, shook his head as dizziness warped the world further. “It seems I’ll be resting soon anyhow.” He inhaled deeply, exhaled. He tasted a hint of brine. “I don’t fear dying. I’m ready.”

The White One leaned close, face as blank as its eyes. “I can’t allow that yet. Soon, I will try again."

He simply stared at her, then away. The colors bled around him, then steadily darkened.

~~~ 

He woke to water dripping into his mouth. 

Geralt coughed pathetically. His lungs and throat felt as though someone had rubbed them down with sandpaper and left them raw. He needed the water, so he used his meager strength to seek it. His head agonized him. He couldn’t see, but he could at least roll to his belly. His stiff arm groped until it dipped into the source of freshwater. He forced himself the needed few inches to dip his mouth in and sucked up great gulps despite how its cold slid into his belly. His core temperature remained far too low to be healthy even for a witcher. He shivered and drank, and drank, and…

A tentacle wrapped around his ankle and jerked him back from the water. _Stop_ , the monster commanded. _You’ll throw up again._

He didn’t remember, and considered the gap in his memory while the creature pulled him across the floor away from the water. He hated when he couldn’t remember things. Usually it meant something bad had happened…

_Stay._

He couldn’t have disobeyed the order if he wanted to, his body too weak and his belly too bloated with the water he’d starved for. Geralt curled and shuddered uncontrollably in his wet clothes, a weak attempt to warm his stiff body. Icy soreness over pain consumed his existence. His mind lay in shattered disarray as he faded in and out of consciousness. 

He woke to the creature jerking him upright. His stomach didn’t feel as terrible, but his brain still hammered sickly against his skull with each pulse. He’d rather be laying down.

_Open your mouth._ He did. Something cold and slimy pressed between his lips. _Bite._

He jerked his head back. Tentacles immediately fixed his head in place. One of them forced his chin down, mouth open. A thin sound came out of his throat. He didn’t want anything forced into his mouth! It was always bad.

Again the slimy thing pushed back into his mouth. _Bite,_ it ordered again. 

He pushed his tongue against it, trying to shove it out without biting. A fish, he realized. Dead, most likely, but only recently, not cooked or skinned. 

_How would I cook or skin it?_ the monster asked. _I’ve only my limbs and stones here. You have teeth. Bite._

Geralt didn’t track how long the fish remained in his mouth as the creature out-waited him, ordered, and nudged him repeatedly to eat. Finally, his teeth sank down. He likely wouldn’t become sick, and the creature was right—food would energize him, and he needed any energy he could get. 

Not that he thought it would matter, only prolong his agony and increase the chances of the monster succeeding. With that grim thought, he choked down bite after bite of raw fish, doing his best to avoid guts, fins, and bones. As soon as he’d bitten the major portions of muscle from the limp body, another fish was offered until finally his stomach kicked from the slimy texture and smell, threatening to undo all the creature’s efforts to keep him alive. 

The creature released him, and Geralt collapsed to the floor.

_I should have drowned,_ he thought miserably. There would be no rescue for him. No one would find him. At least he hoped they didn’t. No, the only reason he still lived and hadn’t given in was because he was a witcher, and if staying alive to deny the creature forever kept others safe, he’d do that. 

_Spiteful,_ the creature commented as it pulled his limp frame across the floor. _But I’m learning, being. It won’t be long now._

He shuddered at the cold brine water swallowing him, mentally protested when the creature submerged him entirely except for his face. 

_Be thankful for the cold. It’s keeping your brain from swelling._

He wasn’t thankful at all as the tentacles snaked around his trembling body and the tentilla forced their way under his skin again.


	7. Exciting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter for the prompt word "Exciting". We finally get a Yennefer POV chapter.

Perfectly shaped nails trailed down the aged page. Keen purple eyes flicked over the passages, committing them to memory before turning to the loose parchment waiting for her notes The open window cast white sunlight over her slender hands, warming through her skin pleasantly.

Tedious work, but research and translating languages never daunted her. Yennefer refused to let anything daunt her if it allowed her to achieve future desires. This was no different. The task didn’t tax her due to the mental labor required. It was the books’ deteriorating physical state that caused her the most strain. She often had to guess the faded words from context alone. The bright sunlight helped, giving every impression by a quill a small shadow where ink had long faded. Yennefer scoured the contents, noting down the history she could, jotting down questions where she could only guess.

Exciting, really, getting a hold of these two books. Her White Wolf had stumbled on them in a tomb while dispatching a bothersome group of wraiths last season. He’d then given them to her. She suspected they were a gift of convenience. If it were not so early in his hunting season and the books so heavy and damaged, she suspected Geralt would have hoarded them at Kaer Morhen to add to the witchers’ expansive library. Then the monster slayer would have perused them over the winter, and she’d have never known of their existence.

The man looked to be a daft sword-swinger, all brawn and no brains, but Geralt contained interesting layers and a complex, compelling mind. He maintained interest in academia and kept up with her intellectually on many matters. He wore his emotions and intentions close to his chest, so much that even though Yennefer knew him well, his thoughts remained occluded unless she gave reading his mind genuine effort. 

She rarely read him, anymore. Not knowing lent more to the excitement between them. 

A knock at the door sounded. “M’lady?” a muffled tenor inquired. 

A guard. “I am currently busy,” she called back loftily. 

“Yes, m’lady, but there is--”

Yennefer motioned to the arched double doors sharply. One flung open, nearly clipping the unfortunate guard. She turned in her velvet-cushioned chair to level a cool stare on him. 

“...Pardon, your ladyship. I’ll… I’ll handle things.” 

She gave a curt nod. With a jerked curl of her finger, the door slammed shut.

Honestly, she couldn’t get a moment’s peace around here. Earlier it had been breakfast with the noblewomen, listening to their incessant nattering and petty troubles. After, the lord wanted an audience to repeat his fear of an assassin and his mistress' faithfulness. There was no point telling him he had nothing to worry about. Guards attended the young woman’s every move, but likely he would start suspecting she fancied one of her poor bodyguards and he would have both executed in a bout of paranoia. Similar had happened to his previous two mistresses.

So many years of living, and Yennefer had long become tired of humanity’s fucking trite patterns.

No, discovery held much more excitement than these nobles’ claimed issues. These tomes held secrets to something that could change fate, could harness the selecting of one’s destiny. To wrench control from the old powers that plucked the universe’s strings...

The sorceress dipped the quill, slid the pointed tip along the inkwell’s edge to swipe away the excess, then swiftly made more notes. Her bracelets tumbled to the join of her hand, clicking together as she scrawled tidy cursive to keep the ink thin and make the dip last.

Did Geralt know he was keeping an eye out for a ruin she knew existed from these very books? Likely not.

He’d left three weeks ago to venture into the area. She wouldn’t hear word for some time on whether or not he found anything. She planned to be in the region for some years yet to unravel this royal mess, so there was time. Geralt with his knack of stumbling into old haunted places would simply quicken the timeline. Plus he would clean out any troublesome monsters, a definite preference. Monsters stank and ruined artifacts.

A more urgent knocking brought her head up. “Lady Yennefer!”

What special fucking torture was this? Yennefer lost her place, put fingertips that smelled of bitter ink and mildewed paper on the bridge of her nose. “What?”

“There is a guest downstairs that insists on an audience with you!”

“I’ll not be seeing any guests!” She was occupied with far more important things. 

“But m’lady--!”

“Unless the guest is of higher or equal standing as the lord and lady, I will _not_ be seeing them, and they can kindly wait. Am I clear?”

“I, yes, your lady, but…”

“ _Leave!_ ”

He must have heard the irritation in her voice, because a clatter of armor told her he scampered away.

Honestly, unless it was Geralt with news of her fate changing artifact, she needn’t see anyone, and Geralt _waited_. That was part of his charm. 

She’d been too busy the last time she’d seen him to spend time with him. With her endeavors here to consider, she couldn’t. There were far too many suitors vying for her that would unravel her plans should any find a witcher in her bed. People had stupid ideas concerning faithfulness and sexual relations being exclusive. Thankfully, Geralt didn’t subscribe to such foolishness any more than she did.

Not that he was without attachment. Whenever she denied him her company, Geralt made this… hurt puppy look. He didn’t _mean_ to make the face, and that made it worse. The tiny little bend of his brows and softened cat eyes revealed vulnerability the man didn’t seem capable of possessing. The expression always left quickly, but she rarely missed glimpsing it. He never fussed more than making a comment that he’d hoped she’d have time, and Yennefer appreciated the lack of pressure. So unlike her other pushy lovers. 

Although this last time, he’d seemed more irritated about it than usual.

Yennefer straightened from the book, staring out the window. Now she had distracted herself and wasn’t focusing on translating as much as needed for this involved research. Which annoyed her, because she had intended to get through much more before needing to get ready to attend lunch with the nobility in the garden. That was the way with Geralt, wasn’t it? Even when the man wasn’t around, he could waylay her most carefully crafted plans, cause her to behave differently than she ought, and think things she’d rather keep stored tightly away from any possibility. 

Pinning down _what_ was between them continued to evade proper labeling. Lovers? Certainly. They enjoyed each other in bed, perhaps because they knew exactly what they wanted and wished to give, and when opportunity allowed did so with rather raw, enthusiastic passion. Friends? More difficult. _Allies_ seemed a more appropriate label, with carefully balanced tit for tat, with Yennefer playing for more given than giving on her side. Those results varied. 

Perhaps that was why Geralt held special sway with her. Yennefer had admirers, lovers, people who would devote their life to her. Geralt was far more complicated than a man willing to serve beauty and power. The former men served their purposes, but did little to intrigue her beyond amusement and pleasure. But someone clever, intelligent, adept in bed, and _useful_? Such people were rare treasures, and not to be dismissed. 

Besides, Yennefer never failed to rise to a challenge. Challenges were life’s spice. Anything she could prove within her capability when she applied enough skill, power, and tenacity thrilled her. _That_ never failed to make things exciting. 

Speaking of excitement, there seemed to be a great deal of it outside her sumptuous guest chambers. She listened to the yelling, guards barking orders, and the clatter of armor. She could hear her name among the yelling. The voice sounded familiar… 

Tilting her head, she slapped her quill down in irritation and rose. Yennefer didn’t need to look down at herself to know her garb lay perfectly in place. Black with white accents highlighted her figure’s curves. A high collar framed her shoulder and neck in a commanding way. Light fabric swept about her legs. Pushing her hair back to give her more imperiousness, she marched to the entry and pushed the double arched doors open.

_”I need to see Yennefer of Vengerberg! Unhand me, or she’ll have the lot of your hides strung from the turrets by your braies!”_

Near the top of the stairs leading to her chambers was a man struggling with the guards. He was dirty from travel, unarmored, and still the four men struggled to keep him in their grip as he fought.

Yennefer’s brow pinched. She wasn’t used to seeing Jaskier in such common travel affair. The bright, silken riot of color was absent. Instead, he wore a simple off-color undershirt, laces untied at his neck and chest, sweat stains under his arms and making a V down his chest. His hair was a riot from wind and oil, his face ruddy from the sun and unshaved. A bandage, stained rusty red, circled his hand. He, frankly, looked _awful_. 

She clamped down on the alarm that leapt under her sternum. Something was _wrong_ for Jaskier to be in such a state, and to fight physically with guards. Especially to see _her_. The two were far from friends. 

With her initial panic safely stowed behind a veneer of authority and restrained outrage, she strode toward the scuffling men. To the guards’ credit, they were doing their best to not outright hurt the mad bard. “Unhand him,” she commanded. 

All fighting stopped. Hands left the bard as though he burned their palms. Helmets tipped toward her in deference. Jaskier stood off balance and panting as he stared at her with wide blue eyes. 

Yennefer shook her head, setting one fist atop her hip while loftily backhanding at the air. “You’ve some nerve, showing up here looking like a vagabond, expecting an audience while—”

“Yen!” Jaskier cried out, as though he had heard nothing she said. She might have chastised him for the rudeness of interrupting, but the bard’s running toward her made that alarm jump under her sternum again. Yennefer’s spine stiffened, several spells racing in her mind were he to hurt her. He didn’t, instead gripping her upper arms with his grimy hands, staring her in the eye without blinking. “Yen, it’s Geralt.”

The flutter of fear she’d tried to lock away broke free. 

~~~

It took far more time for Jaskier to tell her all she wanted to know than her capricious patience wished.

Jaskier currently sat on the divan near an open window. A servant brought a tray of tea, and he thanked her as she left. The rogue poet cupped the steaming cup in both hands, fidgeting nervously as he relayed how Geralt had gone missing. 

“Missing”, the bard always said. As though the Witcher had lost his way on the road or Jaskier had misplaced him like a doll on a shelf. It was apparent the man could not entertain the possibility that Geralt had finally been outmatched. Yennefer refused to be so foolish. Instead, she maintained her composure carefully, eyes half closed as she listened and watched the bard’s fingers tremble around the cup. 

At last he told her how he’d fished around in the pond and searched the surrounding area all day for any sign of his whereabouts, then had run to her for help. 

She allowed her weight to rest in the high back of her chair by the empty hearth. She wanted to claw her nails into the arm, but forced her hands to remain loose. The village this pool resided near was an eight day ride from here, seven were one to push a horse, which Jaskier likely had. If Geralt yet lived, then he would likely murder the bard for keeping such a pace with his latest Roach.

But he did not live. A week gone without a trace must be too long to think anything different. 

It was bound to happen. She knew that, but it still plucked a painful note in her throat, through her chest. Her eyes pricked with emotions. She refused to allow such sentiment to fill them, and instead mentally seethed at herself. This pain was her own fault, her own weakness, for allowing someone to _affect_ her. She refused to let it break her, to exhibit her weakness. Instead, she nursed the hurt inside to punish her appropriately while hiding the cracks. 

Jaskier had no such reservations. Even as she watched, his blue eyes filled, the fear radiating from him, the desperateness. “We have to find him, Yennefer. He could be hurt. He could be…be trapped, and…”

She leaned forward, hands clasping. “Jaskier,” she said firmly. “He’s—” 

Her throat closed off. Tension gripped Yennefer’s face, and she could only glare for it, refusing to speak rather than say anything that could betray the cracks attempting to show her upset. _Stupid fool,_ she thought acidly. _Both of us._

Jaskier shook his head. “No. I will not believe that until I see for myself. He’s not gone until I _know_ it-it’s not something else. He’s just _missing_.” When she made no reply, he glared. “He went out there for _you_. You’re the one who wanted him to find those forsaken ruins! You owe it to him to _try_.”

Yennefer wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled, but her composure lay brittle already, and anger could quickly turn into expressing other things. She stood sharply instead, looking down at him. “You need to eat and sleep before anything.” 

The anger seeped out of Jaskier. He stared sad and bereft at nothing, head shaking woefully. “I can’t sleep.”

She lost her patience, and a tired mind, however jumbled, was easier to command than an awake one. She bent and scooped up his chin, nails pinching into his skin. “ _Sleep_ , she insisted, command and power slipping through the intense worry, the distress, the thin line of hope trying to bar back such _grief_. 

Jaskier opened his mouth, pinched in a fishy shape from her fingers. Then his eyes unfocused and he slid to one side. 

She might have caught him, but he was really quite dirty and smelled of horse, dried pond water, mud, and sweat. So she let him fall to the floor on his face, cheek smooshed and his butt awkward in the air. She smoothed her outfit, breathed, and breathed, cleared her mind as best she could before walking out the door, refusing to show how the punishment for caring continued to squeeze and scrub the inside of her chest raw. 

“You, get him bathed and in new clothes,” she ordered the first serving girls she saw. “Put him in the smaller guest room there. When he wakes, keep him locked in his chamber until he drinks and eats a proper meal.” 

As usual, the world leapt at her command, moving around her, for her. She watched only long enough to see him carried out of her rooms with the guards’ help.

Assured Jaskier would be taken care of, she secluded herself in her room. She tried, and failed, to keep her face smooth. The encroaching emotion infuriated her.

“Is he right, Geralt? Do I owe you?” she wondered aloud. Another spike of pain tightened her throat. Her words hissed at the empty room. This time she failed to keep her nails from digging into her chair’s arm. “You thrice-damned fool, Geralt…”


	8. Epiphany

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the prompt word epiphany.

Geralt walked beside Jaskier on the road. The bard hummed, content as he plucked at his lute. Roach’s rein hung loosely in Geralt’s hand, trailing after them passively.

Warm feelings stirred in his chest. Walking with Jaskier comforted him. Here he needn’t even worry for the bard’s safety, the trio in no danger of monsters, starvation, or the elements. They passed fields, the area civil and cultivated. Soon they’d be at the manor out in the country, and they’d never had trouble out here. 

“You should travel with me to the festival,” Jaskier stated abruptly. 

Geralt smiled at his friend. “I can’t this year. Promised the kids.” 

“Ornery brats!” Jaskier immediately responded. “Wretched, awful things! Little monsters, the whole lot!” 

Geralt smirked. Jaskier carried on this way to their faces as well, and the children always laughed while they climbed up him and begged for stories and songs. The bard loved them more than his own life, and they both knew it. 

There were three children, all with raven black hair like Geralt’s. The two older girls had his gray eyes, and one boy possessed pale purple. The girls were rambunctious, the youngest boy shier and bookish. 

_I can’t have children,_ the gruff voice attempted to point out. He did his best to ignore it, as he had many times before. Children only came with the fear of failure. The pit in his belly could only be because of that. They weren’t _unwanted_ , after all, just…

Jaskier cut into his confused thoughts. “Will I be staying the winter again?”

“Will you and Yen keep from arguing about history for hours on end?”

The bard sniffed. “I make no promises.” 

“I’ll bring it up to her. See what she thinks.” 

Jaskier commented how he hoped she wasn’t still sore over his brilliant win over their verbal spar last winter and launched into a retelling of what he knew of the wars. Geralt listened while fondness kindled in his chest. In all the years he knew Jaskier, his passion for history, music, and everything else hadn’t changed. 

Their relationship had started years ago, when Geralt and his mother joined a traveling caravan. Jaskier had been a young bard in the group then, solo otherwise. Geralt had noticed him immediately, and soon after the book in his possession, _Toss a Count_. It was a rare collection of short stories and poems dedicated to mercenaries, spies, and soldiers. So far he’d only read two stories from it: “Vernon Roche’s Escape from Filavandrel” and “Zoltan Chivay and Field Marshal Windbag”. Geralt was dying to read the rest of it. 

Jaskier had kindly allowed him to borrow it, and they’d settle around the fire every evening, talking well into the small hours. They debated the stories’ meanings, author biases, the characters themselves. By the end, he felt he _knew_ each character, as though he’d met them, so vivid was their image in his mind. The bard and he? Forever friends since, always making plans to meet up.

He’d even supported his marriage to Yennefer, despite their disagreements.

 _She can’t be your wife,_ the gruff voice insisted. _She would never marry. Never._

Geralt knew that. He looked down at the road, his peace unsettled. 

Jaskier bumped him. “What are you thinking, old friend?”

“Uh, just missing the family.” Not entirely a lie, but not truth, and guilt squeezed his gut.

The other man gripped the back of his neck, shaking him light and playful. Geralt wished he wouldn’t do that. It gave him _thoughts_ , and he felt terribly unworthy toward his friend and family both for it. “Cheer up! We’ll be there in less than an hour. Then we’ll be overrun by little monstrosities.”

That cheered him for a moment. He shrugged and followed Jaskier on the road, Roach at ease as she trailed after. _Say no,_ the raspy voice insisted. _It’s not real._

It seemed real, and he couldn’t fathom how it couldn’t be, why he wouldn’t want it to be. Not until they approached the manor. A girl yelled shrilly, and two scampered barefoot up the road to intercept them. Yennefer appeared in the open doorway. She leaned against the door frame watching their approach, youngest child on hip and a smile on her heart-shaped lips. Her eyes held a happy shine to them. 

No sign of the hungry dissatisfaction hardened her gaze.

Geralt’s steps came to a halt, staring across the distance between them. The girls collided into Jaskier as he knelt in the road with arms wide. Geralt barely heard the laughter and the piped questions. Instead, he continued to stare at the sorceress and her content smile. 

He took in a breath, released it slowly, shoulders falling some. “It’s not real.” 

The children and Jaskier didn’t notice, jabbering and ignoring him. He cast another look to Yennefer, who still waited patiently for him. 

Fiery anger leapt in his words on her behalf. “You hear me?” he yelled at his surroundings. “It’s not real!”

The scene froze. Utterly. Birds stopped. Roach’s breathing no longer huffed behind him. His beautiful but non-existent children stood still, cherubic fingers up, tiny teeth bared in grins and gray eyes in happy crescents. Not a hair or wave of Yennefer’s skirt moved. The clouds in the sky were as immobile as if only an oil painting. Geralt’s angry, hurt breaths were the only sound. He could feel his heart, another note of the wrongness; it beat four times too fast.

Jaskier moved. He straightened from where he’d been kneeling, brushing dust off his clothes. Geralt hated when the monster did this, used the faces of people he knew to speak to him. Jaskier’s eyes were blue, but always animated and quick. When he turned to look at him, the blank pale, pale blue stared at him.

“What was it this time?” The monster used the image of Jaskier’s hand to motion to the children. “The little ones?”

Geralt didn’t want to say. “I can’t have children,” he answered instead. 

Jaskier’s head tilted. “You’ve always liked the children, though. You want them, even though you’re terrified of being a poor father.”

“I don’t want them,” he lied. He knew he lied. Before, he hadn’t given the wish any thought, because it was impossible. There was no point wanting things that could never be. No, better to simply not think about it. Yet the monster had picked up on the buried desire, likely from all the memories of Geralt giving orphans food and teaching them the basics of snares. 

Once the monster knew, it hadn’t let up, introducing various children and scenarios. The challenge of raising them had nearly undone him, forgetting they were not real. He’d be so occupied in assuring the little humans dependent on him lived well, the monster would fool him for decades. 

That wasn’t what had made him realize the monster’s trickery this time, however, and the monster, already so deep in his mind, knew it. 

“It was her, wasn’t it?” Jaskier’s hand waved toward where Yennefer waited, frozen on the threshold. “I thought I got her perfect. What do I keep missing?” 

Geralt shook his head. “It’s not her anymore.” 

“Tell me,” the monster ordered. 

If he didn’t say, the monster would dig and find out. He looked down at the dirt on his boots. Dark hair swung before his shoulders, wavy and soft. He didn’t have a single panel of armor on, and the weight of swords on his back remained absent. Here he was a simple human, but Yen could never be so. 

“Yen isn’t the type to settle,” he explained. “She’d never want _normal_ , would never settle for _less_. She is inherently unsatisfied, wants everything, and that will always overrule the love anyone can offer her.”

The monster frowned with Jaskier’s lips. “But you want her to choose you.” 

He shook his head again. “The moment she chooses me, she’s no longer _Yen_.” 

The monster remained silent for a long moment before Jaskier’s face pinched. “This is quite the epiphany. You will always want something you can’t have, will always know you can’t.” 

Geralt looked stubbornly away to the frozen fields, to the birds still in mid-flight, wings not moving. People said witchers were incapable of love. How he wished at times that were true! Yet he was the one who had given his wish to the genie, binding their lives together, so he simply set his jaw and remained sullen and silent. 

He kept his eyes trained away from the family he could never have. _Because I will always say no rather than embrace a lie._

The monster paced around him, hand on Jaskier’s chin. The blank pale eyes considered the surroundings as it mused aloud. “You require enough sorrow that the happiness doesn’t jolt you. You steep in misery with more content than joy, because it’s familiar. I’ve been doing better at mingling the two.” It considered the children, faces fixed in motionless glee. “You want children in some capacity, but having ones from your own body also alarms you. The prevalent loneliness I would gladly fix for you. In fact, I believe it is key to changing your fate.”

The monster turned to consider Yennefer. “But this interest you’re too aware is incapable of settling with you. Thankfully, there are other options. Someone who seeks your company, enjoys it.” The monster spread Jaskier’s hands palm up. Geralt could see the epiphany drawing up his friend’s familiar face. “Someone who invites you into their space and sees it as no cost to spend time with you.” 

Cold pitted in Geralt’s stomach. “Don’t.” 

A bird-like tilt of Jaskier’s head. “You’ve had thoughts. Dreams.” 

His head shook, slow, denying. Lying.

The monster stalked up to him, moving Jaskier’s frame in a way so unlike the bard. “Yes, I believe that will work. Familiar enough, different enough, something truly desired. I will try again.” 

He wanted to step back. His feet wouldn’t move. Geralt cursed and closed his eyes as the monster reached toward his forehead. A jolt, and his memory washed away for the thousandth time. 

~~~

Jaskier woke with his head pounding from dehydration. 

Not a hangover. That was a distinct sensation. He was familiar enough with dehydration to know he needed to drink something. 

How many times had he caught up to Geralt or waited for him at a crossroads, only to have a water flask thrown at him at first sight?

 _Geralt…_ Jaskier swallowed back the verging grief. No, he would not mourn the witcher yet. Not until he _knew_. 

He forced himself to sit up, blinked at the window. He wounded hand shook as he poured water from the pitcher on the nightstand. Well, he must not have slept too long. It looked to be getting closer to sunset if the unshuttered windows were any indication. He drank one glass of water. Cold slid into his empty belly. He poured another and immediately gulped it down before setting the cup aside. Crusty eyes blinked down at himself. 

Oh… Clean and freshly clothed in a night tunic. The bandage on his hand had been changed and smelled of salves.

The epiphany hit him hard. Clean and freshly clothed and bandaged! if there had been time to clean him and dress him, how long had he been asleep? Had he been awake for that? He didn’t remember! When did he get to sleep in the first place? He scrambled from the bed, nearly fell down on unsure legs. Stumbling for balance, he tottered to the door. 

The handle clacked stubbornly when he pushed the lever. Locked! He spun to see if he missed a second door before trying the handle again in case it had somehow become unlocked, or might release with a hearty jiggle. It didn’t give. 

He slapped his palms noisily on the door. “Hey! Hey, open up!”

His hands stung by the time someone came to answer his pounding. They didn’t open the door, though. A stern voice instead informed him he was under orders to eat the food before they would allow him out. Jaskier cursed and argued, but the servant would not disobey Yennefer’s orders, so finally he stalked angrily to the tray and lifted the cloche from the food. Grapes, cheese, bread, butter, porridge, cream, honey, and some chunks of spiced, roasted goat chunks waited underneath. 

Yelling petulantly that he was eating, he shoved pieces into his mouth. The meal had become cold, the porridge’s surface leathery, and the goat greasy, but his hunger made it utterly delicious. He poured more water to help it down his throat faster, ravenous and clearing all but the last of the porridge before insisting the door be opened.

The servant made a scandalized noise when he marched out, still barefoot in the sleeping tunic. He ignored her and instead cast frantic looks up and down the hall to orient himself. His stomach didn’t feel so great, but there were far more important things at foot than his physical well-being. He strode toward Yennefer’s chambers despite the servant making upset goose noises behind him. He shoved the handles of the double doors down and flung them open. 

Yennefer stood near the window, book in hand, eyes intent on the pages. She wore black pants, thigh-high boots with far too many buckles and straps. A form fitting black and white doublet hugged her figure under a black, leather waist cincher. Silken ruffles spilled from her wrists, small bracers holding the puffy sleeves in place.

“ _How dare you!_ ” Jaskier accused. 

The servant squeaked behind him like she might faint. 

Yennefer didn’t look up from the book at all. “How dare I what, Jaskier?” she asked coolly, eyes flicking as she continued to read. 

“Geralt is _still out there_ ”—he pointed toward the window—“and you have the nerve to _put me to sleep_ and waste a whole day we could be rescuing him!”

“You were useless in the state you arrived in.”

He flung his arms toward her, palms up as he leaned forward in the sleeping shirt. “I’m more useless asleep!”

“Mm.” 

Jaskier set his hands on his hips, staring at her incredulously with an open mouth as she continued to read. “Do-do you not care at all?” 

Yennefer’s eyes remained trained on the book, whispering the words to herself as she walked. Her boots’ heels clopped through the ornate rug. 

“ _Yen!_ ”

Her brow pinched, but she didn’t raise her eyes. “There’s supposed to be an important dinner tonight. I’m expected to attend… Where is that passage?” 

Jaskier stood flummoxed. He sputtered and interrupted her when she attempted to speak again. He couldn’t hear it, couldn’t stand whatever cold-hearted words would drip from those damned, perfectly shaped lips. “You know what? _Fuck you!_ ” 

He slammed the doors, storming past the gaping servant, so angry his eyes blurred. 

He tore through the guest room, hurrying into clothes, hopping around as he yanked on his boots and fumbled to get his belt on. He hadn’t come in with his lute or bag, so he imagined those must still be with Roach. He ran, eyes still blurred with fury. Servants and guards stared, alarmed as he went, but he ignored them except to demand the way to the stables. 

Roach had at least been well-tended as he slept. He ignored the stable boy as he ran a hand down her back to smooth her hair and flung the blanket over her. She stamped, ears flicking at his agitated state. 

He didn’t register the heeled boots approached until Yennefer was already in his peripheral. She slapped his hand sharply before he took hold of the saddle. 

“Idiot,” she chastised. “What do you intend to do?”

Jaskier curled his fingers, gesturing wildly. Roach huffed nervously, shying from him. “I’m going to go back there and _look_ for him!” He turned for the saddle again, grasping it. “I might have missed something. I must have!” 

Yennefer’s slim hand smacked down on the hard leather, jerked it out of his grip. He stared wild-eyed at her, and wondered what he could get away with before the sorceress turned him into something slimy or made his head explode. 

She stared back impassively. “It’s an eight day ride back, if the weather is on your side and you don’t make Roach collapse.”

“What do you care? If you don’t care about Geralt…” He jerked up the saddle. 

She slapped it down again. “You can’t take Roach. Get what you need, but the horse has to stay.” 

Jaskier’s voice practically squawked with anger. “And you expect me to walk back when every moment that passes—!”

Yennefer’s voice raised. “Jaskier! I can’t port a horse!”

He stared at her. She took a deeper breath, looking down at her hands in annoyance. “At least not yet.” She glared at him. “Get what you need. Quickly.”

“I… you…” He shook his head, flabbergasted. “So you’re going to port me back there?”

“I’m going as well.” She spun, hand flinging up in exasperation. Only then did he notice the travel bag slung over her shoulder. “I’ve been up all night studying maps and attempting to scry ahead. Not the best results, but I can get us at least to the town nearby.”

Jaskier trailed after her, wrong-footed and thoughts swimming. “But what about your-your dinner thing?”

She turned, arms folded. The sunlight framed her tall, shapely frame from behind, and she looked like a magpie warrioress ready to rain hell on her enemies. “I was trying to tell you that I formally withdrew my attendance. The lady and lord are upset, but have assured me they will look after our items and Roach as though they belonged to the king himself. Now, get your things!”

Jaskier nodded, still off kilter at the turn of events as he hurried back to Roach to grab his travel bag. He patted the lute case, but left it behind. He pulled the heavy saddlebags over his shoulder. They held all of Geralt’s potions, rations, everything he could think they might need. 

He breathed heavily, staring at the silver sword, then at last cursed and pulled it over his shoulder as well. Geralt had no weapons with him. If he needed any, it’d be the silver. 

He trotted awkwardly under all the weight, jangling and leather creaking. He felt ridiculous as he hurried to where Yennefer stood in the courtyard, her hip jutting out sharply and fingers tapping on her upper arm. She arched an eyebrow as he jogged up. 

“Okay,” Jaskier panted. “I got everything, I think. What do I need to do?”

She rolled her eyes, hand gripping his shoulder over the scabbard strap and yanking him close. “Just don’t move,” she ordered. She glanced down at his chest briefly, eyebrow raising again. “By the way. Your shirt’s inside out.” 

Jaskier blinked, feeling even sillier. Before he could stammer any retort, a hard yank pulled over his entire skin, hooked into his gut. A blinding light flared and g-force pressed over him.

His last thought before they disappeared from the courtyard was the regret of bolting so much food and water all at once.

~~~

Oxenfurt. 

The city fascinated Geralt the moment he laid eyes on it from a distance. The academic jewel of the Pontar had a reputation for its freethinkers, trend-setting youth, and liberal minded arts. He stood on the massive bridge, staring down at the river far below, where children played on its sandy banks. 

He looked behind at the road. There really was nothing else behind him, nowhere to go but forward. 

His aloof mother had paid to send him away to study at a strict military ran school when he was young. He’d done well enough that they had sent him on his way with a sealed letter in his pack for an academy. His choices had been few. He did not know if he had any other family. He couldn’t guess where his mother was, as she never wrote. He had no apprenticeships, no trade skills. He knew weapon skills that the school taught, but the thought of becoming a soldier in the army turned his stomach.

Now, hardly an adult, he forced his feet across the bridge, one with the flow of travelers coming and going from the gates. Nervous, alone, and hoping things worked out.

And at last, something did...

Jaskier stepped over the bench from behind and sat next to him abruptly in the garden niche. Geralt startled only briefly, pausing in his reading as the energetic man grinned at him. While Geralt was the calm, poor student who rarely spoke in class, Jaskier was a _rascal_ , but among the brightest students. The two had quickly become fast friends when Jaskier made it his personal mission to bring Geralt out of his shell. 

“Still studying? I thought you’d be done by now.” Jaskier eyed the book as though jealous. 

“I found the subject intriguing, so I’ve been reading ahead.” 

Jaskier snorted. “All work, no play.” His fingertips tapped atop Geralt’s knee. “I can’t have you going back to being a dull, quiet thing. I’ve a reputation!”

The smile quirked Geralt’s lips before he could stop it, feigning reading once more. “Dull and quiet? Is that what you think I was last night?”

Those lips pursed over a helpless smile before a laugh escaped Jaskier. “All right. Fair enough.” His hand drifted between them, resting on top of Geralt’s. “So, what dreadful herbology, or alchemy, or-or biology have you stumbled on this time?”

Geralt’s heart thrummed. “This chapter is entirely about belladonna, if you must know.” 

“Belladonna. All right, I’m curious. Tell me about it...”

What wouldn't he do for Jaskier? He told him about the more interesting things he learned. 

No gruff voice interrupted his thoughts.


	9. Striking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a long chapter for the prompt word Striking. Jaskier and Yennefer make a discovery and argue. Geralt's sanity is slipping.

Boot heels struck the hard packed dirt, the lord’s manor with its smooth paving stone gone. Yennefer strode forward, chin high as she took in her surroundings, and did her best to ignore Jaskier stumbling to one side and retching. 

The sudden shift in smells assaulted her nose. Smoke, sour water and soap, livestock, and shit holes differed immensely from the civilly ran manor decked in flowers. Her gaze swept up and down the packed path that counted as a road through the hovel. It never failed to disgust her. Not the people themselves, but the reminder such poverty served. 

This could have been her fate, to live and die unknown in such a place. Filthy, abused, miserable… Never accomplishing anything of worth. If she had been ordinary, and not a Source, she would have had no control over her fate. 

She’d kept fine, white scars on her wrist as a reminder of the lengths she would go to have a _say_. She would _always_ have a say, going forward. 

The peasants gaped, chores forgotten as they stared at her. The only thing separating her from a similar life was the Chaos that bubbled in her essence. They looked at her, and knew she was more, and held their breath waiting to see if she brought them terror, indifference, or benevolence. 

Behind her, vomit continued striking the ground with disgusting splashes. 

Well, at least one of them looked dignified and in control. Appearance was important. No one, not even Jaskier, needed to know that she had meant to port just outside of the town, but these places were poorly mapped. A good thing no one had been standing where they appeared. She glanced over her shoulder, wrinkling her nose at the bard sitting on his butt, dazed and pale, chin wet. Everything seemed in one piece, at least. The power portaling took left Yennefer feeling empty, as though she’d swam for hours on an empty stomach. She showed none of it, lifting her chin high and steps steady as she approached a group of three women, all various ages. They were sitting around a large basket of washed wool, in various stages of carding and roving the fiber so it could be spun into yarn. 

“I need a horse.” 

One of the younger women managed to close her mouth long enough to gulp and stammer, “M-m'lady?”

“A horse for riding. Two, if you have them,” Yennefer stated. She knew how she must appear, strikingly beautiful, with whole teeth and unblemished skin, richly clothed, powerful—if these people had anything to give, they would, even if only from fear.

One woman leaned over, looking across the street at a man. Yennefer turned her attention to him. He gave a meek, broken-toothed smile. “Beggin’ your pardon, but, uh, we ain’t got any _good_ riding horses, miss, but we’ve a draft and a mule that take a saddle well enough.” 

Not preferable, but they would do. “Saddle them,” she ordered. She put hands to hips, frowning at Jaskier as he stumbled to his feet. “Now you’re going to need more food,” she chastised.

“And another shirt,” Jaskier said miserably, staring at his shining sleeve. He shrugged off his burdens, looking around the town in dismay. “You couldn’t port us closer?”

Yennefer frowned at him. “There’s interference, so no. Wash your shirt so we can go.” 

“Mister bard?” one of the women said. “I think Willa has some spare clothes that you could… maybe borrow?”

“Do I?” The middle-aged woman looked upward thoughtfully. Her hair was bound up in a scarf and stick-like arms jutted from a faded shirt. “You know, I think I do.” The small woman hefted herself awkwardly off the stool in a way that showed it took effort for her to loosen her thin skeleton before she limped toward one of the houses. “Right this way, master bard. Did you know your shirt is inside out? Never mind, it’s coming off, soon. We’ll get you some water while we’re at it. You, too, m’lady, if you’re thirsty. We’ve a good well.” 

“Thank you.” She’d brought a flask, but there was no telling how long they’d be out here. Yennefer trailed after, eyes fixing on three curious girls with fuzzy braids staring around the corner of the house, whispering together. She gave them a quick grin, earning shy smiles in return. 

The woman walked close with Jaskier, hand on his clean arm. She was sure he had made quick friends with the villagers. He had a special talent for that. “You gave us a fright,” Willa said, “riding through like wolves were on your heels. What’s happened to your witcher?”

“I-I’m sure he’s fine, dear Willa. There’s not anything in the world that can best our witcher!”

 _He hopes,_ Yennefer thought. The punishing pain struck under her sternum once more. It had never fully left. She ignored it. Stopping on the threshold, between light and dark to allow her eyes to adjust as the bard and woman entered further. The floorboards creaked under their feet.

“I certainly hope you’re right. Help yourself to the water. I’ll see what’s in the drawers.”

A humble enough home, well lived, but not in terrible shape, she decided. A double bed rest the corner. A partition wall barred the woman from sight, drawers rumbling as she opened and closed them. Jaskier sat at her table with a cup in hand. The chairs were well made, the table of sturdy craftsmanship with intricate etchings on the sides. There were carvings on nearly all the furniture, now that Yennefer could see in the dim. She sauntered in, taking up a clean, wooden mug from a shelf with a wyvern carved and polished into it. 

“Beautiful work,” she marveled, fingers sliding over the smoothed walnut before she poured herself some water.

“It is,” Jaskier agreed. “I didn’t know you whittled, Willa.”

“Me? Oh, no, my hands couldn’t take that.”

“Your husband, then?” Yennefer asked before taking a sip. 

“Husband?” Willa came from the partition, holding up a large shirt. “Oh, no, I ain’t married, m’lady.”

Yennefer smiled, glancing around. “Ah, sometimes that makes living with another easier.”

Jaskier chuckled in agreement. Willa only looked at them confused. “Not sure what you mean. I live alone.” She shrugged, not noticing how quickly Jaskier’s laugh cut off or Yennefer’s stopped mid-drink, water rolling in her cheek in confusion. “Mayhaps I’ll change that someday.” She offered a cheery grin at Jaskier while offering him the shirt. “So if you find any strapping lads like yourself, you send them my way, hm?”

“But…” Yennefer frowned toward the bed, where a large set of heavy boots rested, woolen socks lolling out of their tops. Willa was far too bird-boned for them. “Whose boots are those then?”

Willa turned to see what she meant, blinked. “Huh. Well…” She ran her fingers over her arm, nail catching at a scab that she picked at mindlessly. “I… suppose those are here for when I _do_ get a man.” She smiled at them. “Yes, that must be it. Same as the clothes. But don’t you worry,” she assured Jaskier. “Until then, I don’t need that shirt, so you needn’t give it back, master bard.” 

Yennefer caught Jaskier’s eyes, and knew without reading his mind that they shared the same, terrible thought.

They rode from the village at a trot, Jaskier leading on the mule that had more of a blanket tied in ropes than a true saddle, Yennefer high on the large bay gelding who clopped along with no complaint despite its age. The horse was easy-going in temperament, and well-loved by the children. Yennefer had given a solemn promise to return “Lord Plodsalot” as soon as she could. The mule did not come with such promises, but Yennefer was sure if Jaskier could avoid getting bit or struck by Roach, he could handle “Yakker”. 

Jaskier turned on his poorly made saddle of rope and knotted cloth. The tan shirt was too big on him, the collar wide and exposing more chest than it should, and he’d had to roll the cuffs up several times to free his hands. “How can a whole village forget a person like that?”

She’d been turning the same thing in her mind since they made the discovery. Everyone Jaskier had spoken to had insisted there was no one else living in the house, but could offer no explanation for the carvings and additional items that had obviously accommodated another person. _A curse?_ she wondered, finger to her lips as the horse lumbered beneath her. No, that didn’t sit well with her instincts. The passages from the books flit in and out of her mind. 

“It’s unfathomable,” Jaskier continued. “Heart breaking. No one will mourn him. No one remembers at all that there’s someone to mourn. It’s—it’s worse than someone dying.”

Yennefer didn’t agree, but continued turning her own thoughts in her mind rather than respond. Three people were remembered. One vanished from everyone’s mind. The people had no sense of anything missing at all, like a person who’d never had a tooth grow into place and thus could never miss it. 

“We can’t forget Geralt, Yen. No matter what happens. _I_ can’t forget him.”

Always such a talker. “You wouldn’t remember forgetting him, so you wouldn’t be sad,” she tossed out for him to contemplate, hoping it would silence him, even if with melancholy. It did not, and she listened with half an ear as he went on in his usual high-strung manner. 

“I _would_ know! There’d be a-a Geralt shaped hole! Here!” He pat his chest dramatically. 

_Usually spells only affect the individual, rather than a whole region of people. How does it affect us? We didn’t know this individual before, at least not that we know of. If Jaskier met him, he certainly doesn’t remember now, but I don’t think he did. If he had, he wouldn’t have observed the strangeness as I did. Is there a way to shield from such an effect?_

“A Geralt shaped hole in the entire world, Yen! Everything he is to us, and to everyone he’s saved, just… no longer there! That—It’s too terrible to contemplate! No, we’re going to find him and assure he doesn’t disappear.”

 _Or is this something temporal, an actual change to order and existence? Possible, from what I’ve read of this artifact. Maybe that’s why the person was forgotten. Maybe the man had simply used the artifact to drastic effect, and it struck him out of existence, or into one of his choosing where the village and its people no longer featured. And if Geralt had used it as well…_ “Would a fate change use the artifact up?” She murmured.

“Hm?” Jaskier slowed the mule to walk beside her, despite how dwarfed Lord Plodsalot made him and Yakker. His neck craned up, and he squinted at her against the sunlight. 

“Nothing.” She shook her head, putting more focus on riding and urging the draft into a faster gait. 

Jaskier clucked and fussed at the mule until it obeyed as well, hurrying up to her side again. “No, no, you know more than what you’re saying. You sent him here to look for something. What?”

Yennefer remained haughtily silent. She owed him no explanation. 

“Yen, that mysterious, uncaring act may charm some, but I had my fill of it years ago. This is _Geralt_ at stake. What do you know?”

She narrowly resisted rolling her eyes, staying cool and composed. “I imagine you’ll know if we find it.”

Jaskier stared at her. The mule lost its momentum, falling behind. After a moment he bumped his knees against the mule’s ribs to accelerate until even with the much longer legged bay. “Do you even care what happens to him, or are you only here for-for whatever it is you sent him to search for?”

Anger rose hot in her chest, but she pressed it down with chilly control. Jaskier could think what he liked of her. It didn’t matter. “Can’t it be both?” she asked aloofly. 

Jaskier bristled, outraged on his friend’s behalf. At times Yennefer found it charmingly knight-like of the bard. He was a dawdling would-be hero, fumbling to take up Geralt’s cause despite it being Jaskier in frequent need of rescue. Of the two, Geralt was far more level-headed, pragmatic, and had been looking after himself at least twice as long as Jaskier had been alive. The bard, though, among his many other faults, was a helpless romantic.

She was sure Geralt wouldn’t know romance if it struck him in the face. Perhaps the mutagens were to blame for that, though. She’d confirmed for herself through research that mages had purposely sought to suppress witchers’ emotions. Their changed hormones and chemistry made them more disconnected, removed from the fear of the dark and everything that went bump in the night. They weren’t without passion, and far from emotionless, but they weren’t ruled by it. How could someone like Jaskier understand this, though? Jaskier was driven fully by emotion.

And right now? Jaskier’s bleeding heart and protectiveness were _annoying_. 

“Well! At least one of us is here for Geralt! Thank Melitele someone is more concerned for his well-being over some old ruins! If something’s happened to him, I suppose you’ll just be disappointed he didn’t clear out of all monsters for you and roll out a red carpet upon your arrival! Wouldn’t _that_ be a terrible inconvenience for you in comparison? And of course you’d prefer him to just slip into some amnesiac pocket. No need to feel guilty, then!” 

That last stung, enough she narrowed her glare down at him. Most people would murmur apologies and duck their head rather than suffer a sorceress’ wrath. Jaskier didn’t flinch at all, blue eyes full of summer storms. 

Yennefer was an ice storm in return. “How righteous of you to believe that Geralt deserves such slavish devotion,” she said frostily. “As though he’s never used or manipulated another for his own gains. As though he’s never spoken harshly to you or been tempted to leave you to suffer from your self-inflicted troubles.” _He never trapped_ you _in a fate with him and then left you naked and alone without a word!_

“He’s never abandoned me,” Jaskier fired. _That makes one of us!_ she thought, trying to keep her fury from her face as he went on. “Why do you bother stringing him along? It’s not as though you’ve a lack of suitors!”

Yennefer inhaled sharply through her nose. The Chaos that had emptied from portaling returned to roll through her soul, ready for use, eager to act on her command as it danced under her skin. “ _Because_ Jaskier, unlike you, he’s useful. Second, he’s well aware of what our exchanges entail. Third, he’s _exceptionally_ good in bed, something _you_ would likely know if you’d get your pining head out of your ass and tell the man you’ve been desperate for him since you were a teenager. Now leave me alone so I can _concentrate_ before we reach the ruins. If anyone can help Geralt when we get there, it’s certainly not going to be _you_.” 

She kicked her heels, sending Lord Plodsalot into a swift canter, happy to leave the aghast bard and Yakker in her dust.

~~~

Students crowded around the table, striking their mugs on the surface, clapping, stomping, and hooting while Jaskier swaggered atop it with lute in hand.

Geralt didn’t join, sitting separate at one of the tiny tables by the window to watch. 

The song was Jaskier’s latest creation, belting out the woes of a hard up fishmonger’s daughter. The students liked it immensely, and he had to admit it was a catchy tune. Jaskier called it _accelerando_ , something starting slow that increased in pace through the chorus. It was amazing how well the drunken students managed to keep up with it and not lose the beat entirely.

Usually seeing Jaskier perform cheered him up some. Today that proved difficult. The sorceress Yennefer had been through Oxenfurt. He’d nursed a hard crush on her ever since she stopped by two years prior to do some research. Today she’d came and went, and hadn’t stopped to see him. It bothered him more than he wanted to admit, a familiar, but sharper, pain sitting in his chest for it.

 _Why would she stop to say hello? She’s four times my age and I’m just a plain student with… no idea what I’m going to do with myself._

At least Jaskier had an idea of what he wanted to do in life. Geralt managed a small smile as the art student grinned his way and winked, felt color rise in his cheeks that wasn’t just from drink. 

_I’m not supposed to be able to blush…_

Shit. There were those random thoughts again. Geralt picked up his beer and drained a third of it, hoping to drown it before it became too prevalent. Things got too confusing if he didn’t do his damndest to ignore the voice. 

When he’d first arrived, the voice wasn’t there. Then trickles of its thoughts started bleeding through. Now it was more insistent, offering unwelcome observations, pointing out the _wrong_ he sensed. Or maybe just the voice made things feel wrong, because that certainly made more sense than what the voice claimed, and if the awful pictures in his mind of monsters, blood, and yellow eyes were real… No. They couldn’t be. The images were too horrific.

If Jaskier knew how _insane_ he really was…

Well. Maybe Jaskier wouldn’t mind so much. He _was_ Jaskier. Faithful, steady, exuberant, and _ridiculous_ , especially when he set his mind to wooing. It embarrassed the _fuck_ out of Geralt, but… he also liked it. 

He had yet to get used to attention being a _good_ thing. Usually when someone noticed him, it was the opposite. In military school, those who stood out were hammered down like offensive nails. On the road, easily noticed people were easy targets. In academy, being noticed often meant being mercilessly picked on. Jaskier shielded him from the last immensely, winning people over or distracting them while warming people past Geralt’s austere shyness. Growing up in an environment where humor and tears got you whipped harder made connecting with unruly students difficult. Maybe he’d never learn. 

Jaskier had never cared, even seemed to find his awkwardness charming. Even now in a sea of admirers, he ended his song, bowed with a flourish, and instead of lingering in their adulation, he jumped off the table and easily shouldered through the revelers to make his way to Geralt.

“Well, I think I have a hit!” he said happily as he slid onto the stool opposite of him. He tapped the tabletop with his fingers. “Only person who didn’t seem to have an opinion on it was you! What did you think?”

A scene flashed in his mind of Jaskier in a much less friendly setting, in a bar that smelled of sweat, piss, and damp wood. Like now, no one had sat next to Geralt, no one except Jaskier. _I’m here to drink alone…_

He blinked when Jaskier knocked his knuckles on the table. “Hello? Ah! There you are, handsome! I repeat! What did you think?”

He scrambled to get himself back to the present. The mug handle in his hand was real, if a little bent. The beer remained dark and heady on his tongue. The rowdy students were making a toast and clanking their mugs together. He could smell Jaskier’s sweat, flushed from a good performance and his smile so wide it looked like it would ache. He’d likely sneak into Geralt’s room that night to celebrate. Geralt _liked_ those celebrations. _Real._

_No, it isn’t,_ the phantom voice muttered.

Jaskier’s grin was dimming. Geralt sucked in a breath. “It-it was fine!”

“Fine?” Jaskier looked as though he’d said his songs were…

_Like ordering a pie without any filling?_

_No, shut up!_

He tried to pay attention as Jaskier went on a tirade about how he certainly must think it was better than just “fine”. 

“I mean—I mean that I just don’t have proper words. It’s catchy,” Geralt blurted, trying to win back his friend, his lover’s, favor. “People will like it, _do_ like it! A lot.” 

Jaskier mocked loftiness, hand circling intricately in the air. “Mildly better.” Geralt’s face heated. 

_I…. Don’t…. Blush._

_Dammit!_ He sucked down the rest of his beer. 

Jaskier reached forward, hand on his as he lowered the mug. “Don’t worry about it! Just busting your chops. I know flattery isn’t your strong suit. That’s yours truly’s repertoire!” Jaskier’s fingertips spread on his chest, grin playful.

He felt mildly better, but still shamed at not having the right words, the right gestures, the right _sanity_. “Sorry, Jask.” He stared at the bottom of his mug. “You’re going to go places. Be famous. You’ll entertain in courts. I’m sure of it.” 

_Right for once. He would be. Were he real._

Thankfully Jaskier kept him distracted from the rough, mean voice, his smile and eyes softer. “Thanks, love.” Warmth thrummed in Geralt. “And you are going to be a famous healer.” He raised his mug, as though already toasting his future success. “Saving people from their own backward practices and superstitions!”

He sighed at that. A fear bubbled out of his mouth, one he’d been trying to tamp down for so long. “And be stuck in some town somewhere, if the army doesn’t draft me to chop off people’s rotting limbs.” And that would likely be very far from his friend. Alone again. Left. 

“Nonsense. You’ll go with me!”

Geralt stared. Was Jaskier asking him to… “Go…with…?”

“Yes! Think of it! I will sing and lift people’s hearts, charm them with my wit, art and culture, while you bring them medical knowledge and aid their sick! We’ll be a liberating duo, light shining on people’s dark ignorance!” He raised his mug again. 

The warmth threatened to overwhelm him, fear striking through it like lightning in equal measures. The loud sounds of the inn faded, the world narrowing onJaskier as spoke excitedly, reciting dreams of the two of them taking on the world, saving people, being _useful_ and _heroic_. 

_I want that…_

The gruff voice growled anxiously, but he did his best to ignore it. 

“So, what do you say?” Jaskier asked, holding his hand toward him, eyes bright. “Do you want to—“

The gruff voice rose out of him like a snarling wolf, more scared than bold. 

“ _NO!_ ”

Geralt breathed hard. The tavern had quieted, students staring his way. He’d stood up without realizing. Jaskier stared up at him, eyes wide, hand still out, his face slack in astonishment. 

_No. No. Always no. This isn’t…_ “I must always say… I have to…” All the stares pressed on him, threatened to choke him where he stood, and he fled. 

The bracing night air slapped a chill through him the moment he stepped outside and bolted down the familiar streets. Oxenfurt blurred around him, so much darker with his gray human eyes than yellow cat eyes. He near-crashed into crates twice near the docks, the landscape every shifting as the harbor loaded and unloaded new items daily. The smell of river water, mud, boats, fish, and other sour things were familiar, though dimmer with his human nose. He ran out of breath faster. He didn’t have the muscle bulk, frame lankier, so the chill bit at him. He’d forgotten his cloak in his hurry. 

Finally he found the bench in the garden by the riverside. He stared at it, catching his breath before he slumped down to sit on the cold ground in front of it. Emotions pressed on him, too many, and whereas before it had seemed natural to feel, now it didn’t, flooding him out of control. He thought he might explode from the press of them in his chest, knotting his belly, and he couldn’t _stop_ them, could barely breathe. His teeth found his knuckle desperately, squeezed and squeezed till blood coated his tongue. 

_Real…!_ Heat slid down his cheeks and turned cold at his jaw.

He heard Jaskier’s shoes patting the ground at a swift run. Geralt huddled in on himself further. His hair was dark. His skin was not bone-white. Jaskier might miss him in the dark… But Jaskier didn’t. His steps slowed, approaching him as though a skittish animal. 

“Hey,” he said softly. 

Geralt sniffed, knuckle still clenched in his teeth. He shuddered. 

“Hey,” Jaskier said again. He came closer, and a warm weight dropped over Geralt’s shoulders. His cloak. Some scuffing at his side, and Jaskier settled next to him. He could feel his warmth, hear his breath, smell him—so real and breathing by him. “I’m here.” 

He shuddered. 

Jaskier’s hands came to his, brushing on his lip, his chin. “Hey… Okay, let’s loosen that bite… easy now.” 

Geralt bit down harder, the pain sharper, shuddering again. _Real…!_ If it hurt, it was real, and he knew _this_ kind of pain. Everything in his chest…! More heat slid down his face. 

“Geralt,” Jaskier said, gentle but firm. “Let go… Easy…. Shh… there…” 

He unhooked his teeth, sniffling at snot and salt water. 

“There you go. There now…” Jaskier leaned on him. Geralt leaned back, entirely unmoored, feeling half out of his skin with madness. 

_It’s not real!_

“It’s too-too much!” he stammered. 

“Shh… It’s being human.”

Another shudder shook him, rattled the fear he wasn’t used to feeling out of his lungs. “ _I didn’t ask to be human again!_ ” 

“But you don’t want to go back. Do you?”

Geralt shook his head. No, he didn’t. He wanted to _stay_. He wanted to be human with dark, soft hair and travel the world with Jaskier and feel love so sharp it hurt. But what he _wanted_ and what _was_ …

He didn’t know what he should do or if anything at all was real. He shuddered again. Jaskier’s arm wrapped around him, giving more shushing noises. “Come on. Let’s get you up.” 

He obeyed, feeling shaky as a lamb. Jaskier stood in front of him, steady, solid, assuring. But…

 _It’s wrong…_ He looked down at his hands. He should be able to smell the blood trailing down his finger sharply. He lifted his human gaze to the too-dark river with its muted smells. “It’s not real, is it? None of it…”

“It’s okay. We’re close. We’re very close.” Jaskier touched his face, thumb trailing in the unfamiliar wet tracks. When he looked up at Geralt, his eyes were fields of pale, pale blue. “I’ll try again.” 

Geralt emitted a startled sob as he jerked back. Jaskier grasped his temples, a silent shock striking through him.

Everything swept away again.


	10. Summoning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the prompt word Summoning. Bamf Yennefer, coming up!

Jaskier hung back with the mule and horse as the sorceress summoned power. 

She had knelt by the water’s edge for a good mealtime with her eyes closed, fingertips of both hands resting on the ground as she focused. Jaskier could only imagine she was sensing silently at the water-logged ruins, and did nothing to break her concentration, especially when the imperceptible vibration began and birds erupted into flight from the treetops. 

Without a word she straightened, wrists circling, fingers tense and shivering in a slow motion upward. 

No matter how Yennefer’s cool demeanor and barbed comebacks could scrape him emotionally, he didn’t think her power could ever not awe him. The Chaos twisted reality and order to her whims, and the land _moved_. 

Slabs of ancient stone churned and clouded the water. Uprooted from their eons resting place, they groaned and grated, the peace broken by great, sloshing waves and upended construction. The reservoir turned into a whirlpool of blackish brown water, swirling violently downward. It drained swiftly as Yennefer motioned and guided broken building where she pleased. 

Life died for it, animals and plants withering as the arcane energies stripped them, and what was not consumed by the Chaos was surely doomed when dripping tons of stone planted against the edges of the large bowl that had once held happy fish, minnows, and bright plants. The mud gurgled under the weight, pressed and pushed from the slabs. Water-smoothed stones rolled and scraped. Drained, the maelstrom of water turned into small rivers, then muddy streams that left debris and silt in their wake as they followed gravity to the center. 

The misshapen pale dome looked even worse in the sunlight, like a warped skull with dark, muddy streaks striping its surface. The mud had settled around it for so long that only the smallest opening could be seen under what Jaskier assumed to be columns, but this wasn’t where the hole leading down lay. The black slash in the ground opened just to the side of it, exposed under the sky like a neglected wound. The water echoed from far below, distant splats heralding a dangerous drop. Only the feeding stream continued to flow down it now, a broken, uneven fall off the edge into the dark below.

Yennefer paused a moment before she made a swiping motion to the left. Small trees, grass, roots, and more uprooted, cracking and snapping, rustling like fast moving snakes as the greenery rushed for the hole. The vegetation wound and twisted around itself, cording, braiding, knotting, falling over the edge and continuing to slither and wrap before swaying to a halt.

The sorceress released a slow, steadying breath. Jaskier let her gather herself in the following quiet, mute in the wake of such power.

How could he ever hope to compete with someone of such controlled magnificence? 

For two song-lengths, Yennefer stood without moving, and Jaskier did the same despite the anxiety that built to find Geralt. He must be below their feet, and now Jaskier had a true hope of reaching him. He listened to the water falling, echoing somewhere below. The thought of going down into the unknown made his pulse speed like a frightened rabbit, but he needed to get to his wolf.

Finally, the sorceress inhaled deeper. As though she hadn’t taken a moment to recollect herself, she motioned gracefully toward the emptied pond, now a bowl of wet stone slabs and a misshapen dome. “Get whatever you’re taking and go down. I’ll follow.” 

He swallowed. He should have been doing that already, not gawking at the show. Feeling foolish, Jaskier opened one of the saddlebags where the vials rested. Not the thin ones for oiling the swords, the shorter, fatter ones. 

_None with the skull insignias or metal wrappings._ Those had the still-living mutagens squirming inside them. Geralt had told him to never touch those. But he’d seen the others being used, had nagged Geralt with questions when camped and the witcher ground and boiled ingredients. Since traveling with Jaskier, he always used a separate, miniature cauldron for these to avoid poisoning Jaskier. The bard had noticed, but had been too afraid to comment at the nicety of the gesture. Instead, he had enjoyed the view of fire glinting from Geralt’s reflective eyes, at their luminous _otherness_ , and he’d tried to make rhymes for what he knew of the potions. Much to Geralt’s annoyance, he was sure.

_Light green is for thunderbolt, fast reflex and strength three-fold._   
_Black blood is black as night, makes a witcher an unsavory bite._

Jaskier’s hand remained stiff through the bandage. It would have healed, but being on the palm of the hand meant the cut kept opening, and even he could admit his folly in his previous care for the wound in his hurry. The salve was doing its work, at least, and it no longer felt hot and puffy underneath the wrap. He picked through the vials with his good hand, holding them up to the light, nervously surveying them. Which would be best?

_Royal purple is tawny owl, helps a witcher’s endless prowl._   
_Dark green is for green cat eyes, for peepers black and vision precise._

He paused. Yennefer remained standing at the pond’s edge, arms folded as she waited. Without complaint, he noticed. She must still be recuperating. “Uh, Yen? Will you be able to make light still?”

The look she shot him over her shoulders was thunderous and insulted. 

“Never mind,” he muttered, turning back to the potions. The cat eye’s vial returned to its neat compartment. 

_Maribor forest is too hard to rhyme, it’s silvery, lovely, and wholly sublime._

He picked up the next vial. Empty. He squinted up at it. Dark amber glinted in the very bottom. _Oh, no did he already use the honey or golden oriole?_

He couldn’t tell. He picked through the potions, pulling out another that was pale yellow, the cylinder thinner. Was that it? Or… maybe this larger one, with even paler yellow? How did he rhyme these? Wait, this one in the curvier vial was about the same color. “ _Golden oriole, glitter gold_ …” he muttered to himself. “Is that the one that reverses toxins, or is that white honey? _White honey bright as the sun, makes toxins and witcher potions undone?_ I knew I should have written them down.” He looked between the two bottles, then tucked both into his pocket. 

The next was the red potion, and he was glad to see that it wasn’t used up. “There you are. _Swallow, swallow, bloody swallow, ruby life within a bottle._ ” It went into his pocket as well, and then he slung the silver sword’s belt over his shoulder. Geralt had worn it so long that the leather had warped and blackened where he buckled it to fit him, but Jaskier wasn’t nearly as broad shouldered. He notched it down so it didn’t bump all over his back, then trotted over to Yennefer.

Yennefer frowned at him. “First you couldn’t hurry here fast enough…” she griped. 

Jaskier lifted his hands in surrender. “My fault, entirely. Shall we?”

He said that as easily as he could, but approaching the ominous black where water glinted on its way down before vanishing to echo ominously from below made his nerves squirm. He looked to Yennefer, holding his breath. 

She motioned to the thickly roped vegetation. “They’ll hold,” she promised. 

Even if it looked to be the thinnest thread, he’d have gone. Geralt was down there, he reminded himself. He knelt down on the wet stone. He could see the water tumbling down into the abyss only to disappear beyond the sunlight’s reach. He fumbled about for the best way to go down without falling. His emptied stomach twisted as he crawled backward, feet first over the drop, knuckles white as he gripped the uneven rope. It creaked, the green scent of broken plants sharp in his nose. It snagged at his bandage. The water scattered beyond the lip, cold soaking through the too-large shirt immediately. He took a deeper breath, summoned his meager courage, and edged down on his belly, knees grasping the rope. The vegetation at least gave plenty of knots and pockets for his fingers as he supported his weight fully, and descended into the dark. 

The further down he went, the more the rope swayed. The light above became a small, slanted window, becoming the only thing he could see while black surrounded him. All he could hear was the splashing water below, water drops echoing elsewhere, his own breath and the creak of roots under his hands. His arms tired, and he didn’t savor the thought of climbing up. 

_How will we get Geralt out of here?_ He wouldn’t leave Geralt down here, even if he… _He’s not, though. We’re going to find him alive._ His heart bent, on the threshold of breaking, because he knew there was a possibility the witcher wasn’t okay. Down here, the worst fear may be confirmed. But if he let those dark thoughts snuff the frail light of hope in his chest, he’d be swallowed in the blackness with it. 

No, best to focus on the descent, and pray nothing waited below with a toothy mouth opened wide waiting for a tasty bard to drop into its maw. 

Jaskier eased down one story, two… Nearly to what he guessed was a third story, his feet unexpectedly dipped in water. He squeaked, startled, feet jerking up. 

Yennefer’s voice echoed from above. “What is it?”

“Just-just water!” He hoped. He dipped his foot down, wondering how deep it was, forbidden thoughts summoned of what lurked below. 

_Geralt. Think of Geralt!_ The witcher never hesitated to dive into underwater caves and gloomy, monster infested tunnels. He was so much braver than Jaskier could ever hope to…!

His foot touched stone. “Oh!” He tapped his foot down again, testing about. His shoes became soaked, but there was no helping that as he set both feet down. It was only ankle deep. “It’s okay! There’s ground here!” he called back up, giddy with relief that he didn’t need to swim. 

“Stop yelling,” Yennefer ordered. “Anything down there will know right where you are. I’m coming down.” 

Jaskier put a hand over his mouth and looked around at the blackness, hearing the water. The light above dimmed as Yennefer’s slimmer frame blocked it briefly. The vegetation creaked. 

Now holding still and listening, he heard something else. Something different from the splatter of falling water. A sharp rattle and bubbling of water. 

“Yen?” he whispered. 

“What?” she grouched, steadily heading down. 

He uttered a shrill syllable, choked the word off and whispered in a slightly more dignified octave, “There’s something down here.”

Yennefer paused in her climbing. Jaskier swallowed, reaching over his shoulder. He didn’t pull the sword out with the practiced ease of Geralt, leaning awkwardly, but he got it out and over his head with care to not slice his ear. He’d never been great at sword play, only knew the basics, and against a monster, he could only hope to win by the thing thrusting itself on the silver point, but it made him feel slightly better to have it in front of him. 

The rattle continued steadily from the same point. He dared a look up briefly, whisper harsh. “Yennefer!”

Light bloomed overhead, dazzling him. Jaskier flinched, angling the sword to one side to push his face into the inside of his elbow to shield his eyes. He blinked over his forearm. 

With the magic globe summoned over Yennefer, he could see the space in its entirety. A cavern, large, half natural stone formations and half crumbled pillars and walls. Jaskier’s eyes flicked about. He lowered the sword, the metal heavy in one hand as he turned to look. 

No monster. No Geralt. Just walls, stone-filled arches that led to nowhere, and water. The rattle remained. Jaskier stepped away from the tumble of water and vine of rope. Water drops plucked the surface where they fell from stalactites, dark ripples circling in the water’s surface. Except one place lay a small vibration of ripples, constant, rattling, bubbling. Hefting the heavy sword up, Jaskier held his breath and ventured toward the small, wet clatter. 

The light glinted from metal. Sucking in a sharp breath, Jaskier leaned down, sword held wide to the side as he scooped up the silver in his bandaged hand. His throat tightened.

The wolf’s head amulet trembled in his hand like a living thing. He had never, _ever_ seen Geralt remove it from his person.

“Geralt,’ he murmured. Panic rose in his chest. He straightened, looking frantically around. He had to be here! But there were no doors! No openings! Where…?! “Geralt!” he yelled. His voice rang off the walls. His quick breaths panted back at him from the stone. They’d come so far! He couldn’t have simply disappeared! He ran forward blindly, intent on searching the walls. “No, Geralt, don’t you dare—” 

His foot plunged into deeper water, and cold engulfed him. 

~~~

Worry leapt into Yennefer’s throat when the water swallowed Jaskier. Soon he surfaced, spluttering, and exasperation took the worry’s place at both herself and him. 

“Jaskier,” she hissed. She made her way steadily down the rope, a task that would have been impossible with her old, warped spine. She tapped down into the water. Her thigh-high boots were thankfully waterproof, but the footing remained treacherous, unable to see the scattered bits of thick, eroded tile even with the bright globe hovering over her head. She could barely make out the darker line that signified the drop off into deeper water. 

“I dropped the sword!” Jaskier said in dismay, hanging on to the edge. He fumbled to place Geralt’s wolf’s head medallion over his neck for safekeeping, putting it under the shirt that floated around him like a sheet, and dove downward. 

She waited, summoning calm once more. As much as Jaskier annoyed her, she didn’t truly wish him harm. She watched the water intently, able to see the pale ghost of his shirt lowering and rising back up. He gasped in a breath, the sword lifted over the edge and set safely in the shallow water. 

“Yennefer, turn off your light!”

“Are you mad?” she immediately asked. 

“Just do it!” 

That truly annoyed. Not only was he giving her an order, but it took much less energy to maintain the light than to snuff it out only to summon it later. She also had no intention of standing alone in the dark. Something truly was down here, and whatever it was, she wanted to see it coming. She listened, only because Jaskier must have found _something_ , and if it helped them find Geralt (and hopefully her artifact), it was a small thing. 

She dimmed the light to the tiny speck of a lightning bug. That satisfied Jaskier enough, because he dove immediately. Once more she was left waiting, and cautiously pushed her senses beyond. The results were the same, though. She could get a sense of a great space from the ruins, but details were muted so much she couldn’t even sense where the spaces laid. 

Jaskier returned with another great gasp. “There’s an opening under the wall!” he informed, blinking streamlets of water out of his eyes. “There’s light over there!” He balanced himself as best he could, wet sleeve dripping as he shrugged the scabbard off and slid the sword back in it.

Yennefer considered the wall. If she could just punch energy through it… But no. She’d already spent a reckless amount of energy, and removing walls that might support the roof over their head would be beyond foolish. She still hated sitting on the water’s edge and sliding in. Its chill touch reached her skin instantly, beginning an inevitable trickle into her boots. It made the most sensitive areas and her nipples ache from the icy bite. But she’d managed far worse obstacles for her goals, and even for Geralt, so she shoved the discomfort aside and dove after Jaskier. Her dimmed light followed.

At first she didn’t see any light, but then a faint glow just around the edge of Jaskier in the dark. It could have been imagined due to its frailty. She held her breath, careful to avoid Jaskier’s kicking feet. Her hands groped at an archway underneath. It wouldn’t do to hit her head on the rock. Once through she ascended on the other side toward the glow and inhaled when she broke the surface.

_Death._ She wrinkled her nose at the nauseating rot, and again tamped down the worry that leaned toward fear. 

Jaskier gagged visibly at her side. He dog paddled forward and hefted himself over the ledge onto an intact floor that thankfully lay above the water’s surface. Yennefer lingered, treading water as she eyed the larger chamber. Like the one before, it had both natural surfaces and constructed walls. Glowing fungi allowed a dim illumination in scattered areas so she could get a sense of the immensity of the place. Without the splatter of water, it seemed quiet and ominous. 

She hauled herself over the ledge as well, body heavy. One knee, two, and she knelt and stared around with more caution as she motioned above and the light brightened. 

Already on his feet, Jaskier stumbled along the water’s edge, toward the smell of rot. Small scavengers scattered at his approach, and he moaned in dismay at the bodies. Yennefer followed. 

Four of them. Two were children. None were Geralt. 

She eyed the large man below the other three, atop much older and tangled bones and rotten threads. “Our forgotten individual…” she murmured. _Damn._ If he was dead, the artifact hadn’t changed his fate for something else, merely snuffed him from existence. 

Jaskier put his hands on his knees. “It’s not Geralt,” he blurted. He swallowed and turned, eyes casting around for the witcher. 

The stairs leading into a natural wall were empty save for rubble. The room split the two waters, the narrow pool they’d risen from and a much more massive body directly opposite edged with columns in various intact states. It glowed with the fungi on its edges, and one spot in the middle. 

At first neither of them saw Geralt as they approached the other side, and neither recognized what they were looking at when they saw what might have been a stone among the glow. But then they saw the shape of an online of a nose and parted mouth, and before she could truly recognize the sight, Jaskier barreled ahead, sloshing knee deep in stagnant salt water. 

“Geralt…!”

She started after and stopped abruptly. Her magic rippled like a cat rising its spine to appear bigger before a hound. Yennefer’s hands curled in front of her, eyes clenched in concentration. 

_Order_ , her mind supplied helpfully. The opposite of her magic. But… something lay off from it, like something had deranged the intentions of Order. Yennefer curled her hands into fists, subduing her energy to a subtle hum as she walked purposefully after Jaskier. Water squished around her toes with each step. The bard struggled chest high in the water, and deeper. She stayed on the shore and watched him swim the last few meters to Geralt. 

He jerked back to tread water with an alarmed sound. 

“Merciful Melitele! What the fuck is _that_?”


	11. Surfacing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fulfills the prompt word Surfacing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I may be done with this month's prompt words, but no worries! I will be finishing up this fic.

“Come with me, Geralt.”

Geralt sat, stunned as emotions surfaced to overwhelm him. He stared down at Jaskier where he knelt before him, his blue eyes bright and expressive.

They were at their favored bench by the river. Kids played by the shore, collecting shells and making muddy sandcastles. Two were orphaned siblings Geralt and Jaskier had taken under their wing. Bright, troublesome little maniacs, but full of life and love, so much Geralt didn’t think he’d ever be so full of affection for anyone. 

He was used to the ebbs and eddies of emotion now. (And why wouldn't he be? He was human.) While at times their intensity caught him off guard, the purity of their profoundness would make him stop and simply _appreciate_ being swept over by waves of it, something to go with the tide of rather than fight. 

Like now. With Jaskier holding his hand in both of his, kneeling as though for a marriage proposal. He supposed it may as well be, in its significance. 

“A traveling healer?” he queried back. His voice turned weak as his mind spun. 

“You are the best to graduate!” Jaskier proclaimed. “And we know I will have nothing but the best at my side.” 

A weak voice, rough and strained, said _“no”_ in the back of his mind. Always no. Geralt couldn’t remember any reason why. He wondered to himself, trying to think of any reason he wouldn’t want to go with Jaskier. 

“The kids?”

Jaskier cast a look to the beach. “I’m more worried about trying to keep them pinned down in a house than on the road. Plus, it’s seasonal travel! We’d weather the winter in one of the major cities, any of our choosing. It doesn’t have to be a city either! We know Yennefer has offered her various holdings to you for use. If we wanted to, we could stay in the outlying manors, me writing more songs, you restocking and brewing more medicine. What do you say?”

Dizzy, Geralt nodded stupidly. That sounded… _No_ … Sounded… _no_ … He stared over Jaskier’s head, trying to place all his feelings. 

Jaskier’s smile faltered some. “You don’t need to say yes, of course. I understand if you..” 

“No!” Geralt stammered, gripping his hands tightly. “I mean, yes! Of course, I want that!” 

_… no…_

The emotions were all too raw, big waves mixed with trepidation and want. He brightened inside when Jaskier’s wide smile returned. 

“So this is what you wish your fate to be?” 

“I…” _Something’s wrong._ But Jaskier was looking at him, and he didn’t want to hurt him. “I…” _Yes… Just say yes!_ He inhaled, opening his mouth…

_Pain!_

The whole world winked black and white, and Geralt fell to the ground, stupefied. The pain struck him breathless, and he writhed in agony. 

Jaskier was no longer there. Standing over him was the White One, pale, pale blue eyes alight with displeasure. It made a sound that spiked through all his nerves, agitating the torturous feeling more. 

The world went from black and white to only black. 

~~~

The witcher jerked. Not the abrupt reaction to pain or surfacing from sleep. This was the nervous system jerking as though in a death throe. 

“Stop it, Jaskier!” Yennefer snapped. “That will kill him!” 

The bard dropped the squishy portion of the tall head he’d been attempting to pry away from Geralt with a choked sound. The witcher lay stone-still on his side in the shallows where they’d towed him and the creature. The hundreds of tentillas that had stretched from the pull squirmed back into his flesh, one into the corner of his puffy, blackened eye. Yennefer felt sick. She could see the thin tendril snaking under his skin before it rooted to its satisfaction and stilled. 

“How do we get it off?” Jaskier asked desperately. 

She wished she knew. The sight revolted her. The white squid-like being, twice as large as the witcher, remained pressed against his back. Two large splays of tentacles layered over his body tightly, circling even toes and fingers, and kept his arms trapped against his chest. Smaller, hair like fronds glowed dully where they pierced into his skin at all points. By far the worst sight was the open gap on the creature’s head that spilled hundreds of these tentilla out of some vertical mouth, wrapping around Geralt’s head in glowing threads as thickly as any insect trapped in a spider’s web. They didn’t spare his nose, ears, eyes, or mouth, invading every orifice. 

Geralt lay utterly still and oblivious. 

They’d feared him dead. 

As cold as a corpse and wholly unresponsive, Geralt scarcely breathed. Slow, shallow breaths passed his dried, split lips, nearly too light to detect. His heart only beat every twelve seconds, the _lub_ sound first, followed by five seconds till the _dub_ followed. Yennefer had lain with her hand over Geralt’s chest often enough. Usually four seconds passed between the beats, and only one second for the _dub_ to follow. For Geralt, this was dangerously low. His color was sickly, his usual white pallor tinged unhealthy gray and yellow. Black veins webbed through his skin, obvious toxins seeping through his taxed system, so much that what little she could see of his bloodshot eyes past the swelling had jaundiced to only a slightly paler shade than the irises. One eye had burst blood vessels, the sclera a bright red on one side of the iris.

Even as she scoured her thoughts for what to do, Geralt’s nose bled a dark line over his sickly pale skin. He remained on his side, wrapped in the tentacles and didn’t move. His eyes never dilated or focused. Neither he nor the monster had responded at all to being towed to shore and dragged halfway free of the water. 

Worst, she couldn’t reach Geralt’s mind. 

At first she’d feared he was gone, and only a half-living husk remained. After a further probe, she found that, yes, he was in there, but _deep_ , and she could tell nothing specific because the _thing_ holding him captive stood in the way of her attempts.

“They’re too enmeshed,” she explained, glaring at the disgusting monster. “It’s tangled in his nervous system and has him in a psionic hold. If we rip it off, he will die from the shock.” 

Jaskier sat back on his knees. “So what do we do?”

That was the question. Yennefer pressed her fist to her chin, eyes narrowed. Her magic sat unsettled, even the summoned light fluctuating unless she kept it high above out of range of the creature. The creature seemed as asleep as Geralt. I appeared to be a passive effect. What would work?

The creature’s eel-shaped tail moved, water burbling around it. Jaskier and Yennefer held their breath, watching.

The blank blue gave little definition where iris stopped and reflective pupil began, yet Yennefer could tell when the creature’s attention fixed on them, and had an uncanny sense that told her that big, monstrous eye focused on her.

Its mental voice rolled to her senses, an echo that tripped over itself quietly before the word came through at last. _M-m-iii-i-ine._

Yennefer fully disagreed. “You will release him.” 

_Never._

The tentacles tightened, slithering closer to the witcher. Yennefer bit her teeth together in anger. She could sense the monster’s hunger now, how it starved for Geralt’s energy. No, not exactly his energy, his _potential_ energy. 

Several clues clicked into place for her. _Of course… Of course!_ She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. A bitter laugh escaped her.

Jaskier looked at her like he feared for her sanity. Likely he couldn’t hear the tentacled being. She ignored him in favor of addressing the monster. “There’s no artifact. _You’re_ the fate changer.” 

The creature didn’t seem capable of some ranges of emotions, but it definitely possessed pride and indignation. _I offer the being and others the fate that they wish._

“And in turn you kill them, ending all they may do in the future, and feast on the energy Fate bestowed for the path planned. Worse, you remove the impression of all they did prior from the world, devouring that as well.”

The mind slavered at the thought, the tail swishing in a pleased way. _It’s been so long since I’ve had a true feast. I will give him all he desires, things no one else will offer. I am mercy, giving him the power of choice, I am Order’s Exception, the means by which to—_

Yennefer’s face twisted in repulsion. “You are Order’s _parasite_!” she rebuked. “A _mistake_ of someone’s fumbling, something Destiny and Order would never have allowed in their domain by choice! And I will be damned before I let you devour one more being who has far more fucking right to exist than _you_.”

The creature mentally bristled. _You cannot stop me. If you kill me, the being dies with me, and I will soon be strong enough that a vessel of chaos will be powerless against me._

The tentacles slithered, the tentilla brightened, so much she could even see the glow under Geralt’s skin. Then the creature’s mind was gone, once more, having surfaced like a breaching whale and descended into the depths of its prey once more. 

“Dammit!” she cursed. 

“What? What!” Jaskier asked frantically, face whipping between her and Geralt. 

“The creature knows we can’t kill it without killing him in the process, but if it succeeds, he’ll not only be dead, but it will erase his history.” A quiver of anger shook down her spine. “All this so it can devour his potential future.” 

“I heard some of that, but I don’t understand.” 

She glared at the tentilla as its brighter luminescence dimmed to its former level. It must be entirely nestled back in his mind again, and likely no longer sensed its physical surroundings any longer. Surely they could use that to their advantage somehow. “It’s what it does. If it can, it tricks a person into trading their fate in for it to eat. All the energy that Destiny laid for the individual then becomes its food, all their future changes and deeds empowering it.” She bit a nail tip briefly, frustrated and angry. “Geralt must have a great deal on his path before him, if it would rather die than let him go.”

Jaskier stared. “H-how do we stop it?”

“I’m _thinking_ ,” she grit out. “Its magic negates mine, and it’s psionic energies are stronger.” 

“But if we don’t stop it, it will…!” He stared down at Geralt’s still face, swallowing. 

“No, only if it gets Geralt to agree to trade.” Yennefer waved an index finger. “Destiny is a powerful force, ancient magic with ancient rules. It’s the same that drives the energies behind the Law of Surprise, Fate, and Meeting of Souls. When bestowed, it may not be stolen, and only given away to a being capable and able to detect such forces exist.”

Jaskier sucked in a breath as he stared back at Geralt. “That means… he hasn’t given in yet. That’s why we still remember him.” 

“He hasn’t, but the creature seemed certain it would succeed and soon. It’s not above beguiling to get its way. We must interfere.”

“How?”

Yennefer remained silent, contemplating. She couldn’t get to Geralt directly…

“Yen, how? Is there anything I can do? Anything at all!”

She turned the idea in her head, and finally gave a slow nod. “Yes. Let us hope you mean it when you say ‘anything,’ Jaskier. Listen closely.”

~ ~ ~

Jaskier listened, trepidation and horror rising, and thankfully nothing lay in his stomach or he would have thrown it up. 

He swallowed, swallowed again, weakness and quivering belly making him feel unmanned and cowardly, and everything Geralt was not. But despite all his innerprotests, he gasped out an “ _Okay!_ ” Then more quietly with closed eyes, “Okay.” 

“I can’t make any guarantees for what you might see in there, if you can see anything at all,” Yennefer warned as she sat down cross-legged nearby. “However, the creature is occupied, so I think I can make enough changes, encourage what we need. Remember, though, time will move differently, so I will not be able to guide specifics. I can only lend you the ability to do so.” 

Jaskier listened to her matter-of-fact tones as he touched the tentacles with trembling hands. He had to go slow, careful. If he fumbled, he could kill Geralt from the shock.

“If I sense that you are in trouble, I will do what I can to pull you out.” 

Jaskier shuffled down to his hip, apprehension squeezing his chest. The stone was cold beneath him, chill through his wet clothes. His heels dipped in water. “Geralt, too?”

Yennefer gave him a stern look, her purple eyes glassy. Jaskier felt the bend in his heart worsen, threatening to snap as it twisted. The sorceress’s words came slow and determined. “If I pull you out beforehand, we will finish things the way Geralt would tell us to if he were able.” Her throat pulsed, a swallow, the only hint of her dismay at the thought. “We can do nothing less for him if it comes to that.”

Meaning they would kill both him and the monster together. Jaskier fought back tears, even as he managed a tremulous nod in return. Geralt would demand that rather than letting the monster win. Jaskier, too, despite how much it would cut his heart. He would _not_ forget Geralt. Even if he mourned bitterly to his grave, he would _not_!

He rolled onto his side, facing Geralt. His puffed, bruised eyes only allowed a sliver of his blank gaze through, seeing nothing. Jaskier reached over his shoulder, groping for the hilt. The sword hissed, long and slow, as he freed it. He held his breath the entire time, eyes stinging. Only when the deadly length of silver laid free on the ground next to his back did he release a shaky exhale. He looked over his shoulder to Yennefer for guidance. 

She moved closer, just a little apart from the sword laying between them. A flick of a finger and the light above snuffed out. 

Jaskier blinked. It took time for his eyes to adjust to the glow, and he knew what it must mean for Yennefer to relinquish the light. She would be conserving all her magic and mental energy for this effort. Now he must do his part.

He swallowed down nausea again. Trembling, he felt at the long tentacle “fingers” wrapped around Geralt. His touch brushed the dangerous tentilla where they pierced into Geralt’s arm and chest. He shuddered. Slow, careful, and teeth gritted with the effort, he started the arduous task of unwinding the tentacle. 

The monster was as strong as a boa, but Jaskier had traveled on the road, done his fair share of physical tasks and labor in stage set up, and while he couldn’t boast the build of a witcher or dock worker, he was also no lily-white noble fat on others’ work. He pulled, watched in revulsion as the glowing strands began to extract, taut as they strained to remain in the witcher. Then a final tug upward, and they snapped free, writhed like worms seeking ground.

He panted open-mouthed, scared witless. _Shit! Shitshitshit!_ The things had left oozing holes where he’d pulled them out. They snapped to and fro, seeking the nerves they had lost. 

Yennefer’s hand rested on his back just below his neck. He didn’t feel when the sorceress slipped into his mind. _Try to get at least one over your eye if you can,_ she instructed. 

_Fuck!_ Jaskier lifted the tentacle higher, the rows of fronds groping blindly. One finally turned to his hand and plunged in. 

He flinched. It zapped like hitting a funny bone, and he hated that sensation even from a simple bang to his elbow. This felt far worse. _Geralt has saved me dozens of times. Come on, Jaskier. Just…_ He pulled the tentacle away from Geralt further, arm muscles straining. 

For a moment, he didn’t think he could do it. How could he? But another glance at Geralt’s blank, lifeless stare, and Jaskier let the tentacle lower over his head. 

Once it sensed a person, it grasped ferociously. The tentacle whipped around his head and neck, squeezing. Jaskier cried out, the feel of _needles_ sticking past his skin, inspiring panic. Lightning shot down his nerves. His eye felt like a spike rammed into his head. His ear drum burst. Everything went white with pain!

_Easy,_ Yennefer’s mind echoed in his. _I’ve got you._

The pain left as suddenly as it began. Jaskier breathed hard, hands to his face. 

White. White all around. Silence. He stared, trying to comprehend the vast blankness he found himself in. 

Yennefer’s voice echoed to him once more. _Here._

A door appeared before him. Jaskier swallowed and took several deep breaths. A strange disconnection was felt all over his body, especially his legs and feet. He hadn’t considered this, that having only a few tentilla would mean he would feel numb in areas. If it was enough to get to Geralt, though, it was fine. 

_Remember what I said about time,_ Yennefer reminded him as he reached for the door. 

Right. It would be like when dreaming, how sometimes you could nap for an hour but feel like your dream took much longer. He steeled himself, reached for the door handle, and pulled it open. From here on, he’d be on his own, and he didn’t know what to expect. 

Noise, light, and smells immediately surfaced. His eyes adjusted to the gloom of lamplight, the smell of burning cedar, acerbic medicine, and human sweat. 

A bedroom, decent size but not nobility standard. The decor remained simple, more functional than fancy. The hearth burned with steady flames, keeping the room warm and dry. The usual table, chairs, chest, wardrobe, and ornate rug occupied the space comfortably.

He took it in with a brief glance before his gaze landed on the two people in the room. Someone laid in the bed, but Jaskier could pay them no attention when he saw the man sitting in the chair beside it. Familiar, but wholly _not_.

The man stood up, staring at him with just as much bafflement and confusion. Like Jaskier, he was built well-enough, but not like a hard laborer. He possessed the familiar wide jaw, well-shaped lips, straight nose and broad shoulders. Other features were startlingly different. Dark stubble framed a face smooth of scars. He had his black hair pulled back in a ponytail, a few wavy strands having escaped to frame handsome cheekbones. The man possessed flawless, tanned skin.

But the eyes were the most alarming. Round-pupiled and storm gray. _Human._

Jaskier held his breath as the man approached him, those gray eyes flicking over his face and dark brows creased in confusion. He stopped only an arm length away. Jaskier couldn’t move, still trying to comprehend what he was seeing. 

“Jaskier?” Even the voice didn’t sound right. It wasn’t rough, rumbling with the low rasp that lurked in every word. The same tone, but…

Jaskier opened and closed his mouth a few times before managing to find his own voice. “ _Geralt?_ ”


	12. Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, darklings. The song "Winter" is from the books, and also featured in the Polish TV show _The Hexer_. You can listen to the shows adaptation of the song [here](https://youtu.be/YXlLiKwFB_U). Thank you to everyone for reading!

Geralt stared. 

It looked like Jaskier. Spoke and sounded like him. But he was… _older_. Not a terrible amount, but Geralt could see the fine lines of crow’s feet around his eyes, deeper lines around his lips. Perhaps it looked worse due to the overall unkempt haggardness of the man. His shirt was too big, sleeves rolled up. His dark brown hair swept in disarray, and he looked red-eyed from crying. 

The shock ringing in his voice only alarmed Geralt further. The man stared at him as though he were a ghost. Meanwhile, Geralt could think of nothing to say or do, because _his_ Jaskier also lay in the bed behind him, ill from some strange malady. 

He looked back at his Jaskier to be sure he truly remained in bed. He did, sitting up weakly, staring as well. The other-Jaskier spotted him, jumping back closer to the door.

“ _Ho_ -ohhh-okay!” He turned his head in a negative sort of nod, pointing with both fingers. “That’s not right. _That_ is _reaaally_ bizarre-to-look-at-dear me! Is my face really that baby-ish?” He patted his own cheeks. “I need to grow some facial hair or…” He jerked his attention back to Geralt. “Never mind! More importantly! You’re in grave danger.” 

He took a step forward. Geralt leaned back from him, feeling as though he were on a ship tilting up a giant wave before it toppled over. He glanced to his Jaskier for help. 

The familiar Jaskier sat up in bed, pushing with his hands to get upright. “Geralt, listen to me. This is what’s making me sick.” 

_Wrong. It’s all wrong._ Jaskier struggled, too weak to sit up. Concern and healer training had Geralt hurrying to him to help, alarm buzzing through his senses at the thought of leaving a possible doppler at his back. 

“Don’t,” Geralt ordered firmly. “You’ll just weaken yourself.” The gnawing worry hollowing him out took a fiercer bite in his gut. All week Jaskier had been getting worse and worse. None of his training had slowed the weakness and shallow breathing. He kept the children away so they didn’t get sick while trying all he could think of. Pushing a pillow in place, he listened to the rattle in Jaskier’s chest and his heart squeezed anxiously. He scooped up the still steaming tea from the side table. “Here. Drink this.” 

Maybe if he ignored the other-Jaskier, he’d go away. Maybe it was just the mental malady he tried so hard to hide. Maybe…

“You’re a healer,” the newly arrived Jaskier proclaimed, dumb-founded.

He didn’t mean to snap, but he did, even as he guided the sick Jaskier to drink more. “What else would I be?” 

_Other_ things, he knew. His mind readily supplied vague, bloody images.. Another voice grumbled in the back of his mind, flashing sword and armor and dark things. He did his best to push the images to the back of his mind with the rest. Jaskier needed him right now. He couldn’t have a breakdown _now_. So he tipped the cup up, drew it back after Jaskier swallowed enough. He didn’t dare look at the other Jaskier, keeping his eyes on his Jaskier’s wan face. 

The intruding Jaskier neither disappeared as Geralt hoped, nor quieted. “That’s… that’s a senior student’s tunic. And you look so young…” 

Jaskier, the real one ( _wasn’t it the real one?_ ), grasped his shirt, looking at him with pleading eyes. “Geralt, don’t listen to it. That thing is making me sick. I _know_ it is.” 

He spared a glance at the other with his red-rimmed, blue eyes and haunted face, a foreign expression to Geralt. He looked back. “What do I do?”

“Whoa! Whoa-no, don’t listen to that thing!” The other Jaskier spread his fingers, motioning. “That thing is not real! This…” He motioned around. “All of this! Isn’t real. We’re not in a house! We’re in the ruins below the water. You’ve been down here for over a moon-quarter!” He licked his lips anxiously, motioning to him. “B-but we’re going to get you out! Uh…” He looked around. “Somehow.” 

The grip on his shirt tightened. “It’s _lying_ , Geralt. It wants you to give up, wants you to lose everything, wants me to die.” 

Other-Jaskier set his hands on his hips. “Damned right I want you to die!” His hand lifted, palm patting the air anxiously. “Listen! I’ll think of something only I would know! You’re a witch—“

“It knows your nightmares. Don’t listen,” his Jaskier insisted. 

The other Jaskier glared. “Shut _up_ , you slimy bottom feeder!” Blue eyes flicked to Geralt once more. “You have white hair, and you constantly remind me that you’re not human! Uh, y-you hunt and fight monsters for gold, and you—ah!” He brightened, finger up. “You hate my singing!”

_That’s not true._ Geralt opened his mouth, closed it. Some of the things the disheveled Jaskier said rang deep in his memory. Images flashed, of pointed teeth thick with strands of saliva, of nekkers clawing out of the ground, of hissing drowners charging at him, of rotting bodies in piles… Geralt closed his eyes, willing it away. _Those are just from the malady. They’re not real. And I_ don’t _hate his singing._

Displaced, he looked to the Jaskier beside him, took his hand. “You said this thing is making you sick?”

“It is!” 

“I am _not_!” Other-Jaskier protested. “I’m trying to _help_!”

Geralt weighed his options. His stating his wish may not save Jaskier at all, or it would—for a price. Magic didn’t do anything without cost, and life was steep and precious. If he said the words, the price would be taken from him. But he’d tried everything else, and Jaskier only continued to wane. 

“Please,” his Jaskier wheezed.

“It’s a trick!” the other Jaskier insisted. “You’ll die if you do what it wants!”

Maybe. Probably. Geralt took in a deeper breath. “And this will save you?

Jaskier smiled weakly. “Yes. All you need to do is say you want this life. You don’t want a fate where I die, do you? You want one where I’m better and we stay together! All you need to say is you want that fate.”

If it would help him get better…

“Shit! No, Geralt, don’t—!” He heard steps, but they halted abruptly. Other-Jaskier fell abruptly to the floor with a pained gasp. Concern spiked instinctively and he twisted to look.

Jaskier grabbed his cheeks with both hands. “No, no… don’t pay it any attention. Just look at me, okay?” 

Fear, ever strange and foreign, prickled icily up his spine, but he obeyed even while his senses screamed at him to check on the other Jaskier to be sure he was okay. But why would he? This Jaskier was the one who _knew_ him, who kept him company and hummed while running his fingers through his hair until he fell asleep. 

“You can save me, okay? Break this whole spell. All you need to do… is say the words.” 

There was supposed to be another voice saying “no”. It never came. He remained frozen with indecision, mind too pulled and confused for anything to come through save for his gut screaming things were terribly wrong. He opened his mouth, syllables catching on the roof of his mouth. 

“Go on. You can do it. I promise all the nightmares will go away.” 

A cough. The intruding Jaskier’s voice called out, strained and urgent. “You liked one song!” A rustling as the other man attempted to sit up. “At least, you always went quiet and listened when… Let me…” Another deep breath, his voice thin over the words. “ _Around your house… Now whiiiite with fro-ost._ ” 

Geralt listened, the tune familiar. A delicate melody, quick syllables followed by flowing drifts of notes. The song came stronger with Jaskier’s next breath.

“ _Sparkles ice! On poooond and maaarsh._ ” 

He knew the next words, and listened intently, leaning away from the Jaskier he knew to look at the one half sitting up on the floor.

“ _Your longing eyes. Grieve. What is lost._ ”

Geralt whispered the next words with him. “ _But naught… can change this… parting harsh._ ” 

He stared. The other Jaskier stopped singing to shake his head, blinking his eyes in an attempt to focus. The “sick” Jaskier’s hand remained gripping his shirt, twisted tight.

“You call that one ‘Winter,’” Geralt said finally.

Jaskier stared at him from the floor. “Yeah. Hoping it does well.” He managed a shaky smile before tapping his fingertips to the floor with determination. “I promise you, this isn’t real. A white monster with tentacles has you pinned in its grasp. Yennefer is doing all she can so I can be here. Let me lead you out.” 

He continued to stare at the bard on the floor even as his ( _no_ ) Jaskier rambled at him to not listen, that the one on the floor wasn’t real, ( _no_ ) that he only wanted him to die in nightmares. _No._

The other Jaskier picked himself off the floor, clutching his temple. “Come on, Geralt. Don’t make me sing _Toss a Coin to Your Witcher._ ” 

“No.” 

That had come from his own mouth, he realized, and it was the first thing that felt truly right since Jaskier stumbled through his house’s door.

“No, don’t sing ‘Toss a Coin’?”

“No, definitely don’t sing that.” He inhaled, shifting his gaze to the Jaskier in the bed staring aghast at him. “And… no. No, I can’t agree to that either.” He drifted back, intent on standing and gaining some space from both of them. 

“Geralt? Geralt!” The grip on his shirt tightened. “Think of the life we have! The orphans, the people you’re helping! And me! Don’t you love me?”

“I…” His tongue stuck, pain radiating through his chest and stealing his breath. 

“ _What_?” 

The furious hiss from Jaskier as he stumbled to his feet had Geralt staring at him, heart in his throat. He didn’t think he’d ever seen such rage in Jaskier before, not even when he was drunkenly belligerent. His jaw muscle jumped, his teeth bared as he glared at the sick Jaskier. “How fucking _dare_ you!” He lurched toward the bed, lungs bellowing with rage. “ _How dare you make him—!_ ”

The hand not clinging to Geralt’s tunic swiped toward Jaskier. He dropped mid-yell with another pained gasp. “Foolish being,” the creature that was not Jaskier murmured. “Do you not understand how easy it is for me to stop your heart?” The blue eyes twitched toward Geralt, solid, pale, pale blue. 

Panic jolted through him. Geralt fought to get to Jaskier where he struggled to breathe on the floor. The fraud’s hand clamped like a vise on his shirt. The cotton should have torn, but stayed unnaturally fast. The monster wearing Jaskier’s face remained unaffected as he kicked and thrashed. 

“Don’t worry. I’ll try again.” It made a swiping motion down at Jaskier. 

“ _NO!_ ”

A hiss and smoke. The grip on his shirt abruptly loosened. Geralt fell back, momentum carrying him to the wall to tumble hard to the floor as an unearthly wail filled his head. The monster held its hand by the wrist, it’s stolen face twisted with pain.

_Don’t gawk!_ the gruff voice snapped at him. _Move! A still witcher is a dead witcher!_

He scrambled for his feet, was met with Jaskier (the real Jaskier!) grabbing hold of him and helping him balance. The figure of Jaskier in the bed changed, skin turning white, those pale, pale blue eyes bright and hungry as tentacles slithered from the blankets. _NO! You are MINE!_

“Come on! Let’s go!”

They staggered for the door. His mind whirled with too much. Instead of looking back or ahead, his eyes fixed on Jaskier’s chest. A familiar wolf-head shivered on its chain there. He knew that medallion even better than he knew Jaskier’s songs, and that was enough to keep him moving, from dealing with the looming reality hanging over his head.

Only once they were out the door in the cooler, night air did he balk, bracing his heels to look down the street. “The kids..!” Even though energetic and quick, they were still so small and vulnerable. He couldn’t just…!

“Kids?” Jaskier stepped in front of him, taking his jaw in hand. “Geralt, no! There are no kids! Okay? It’s _not real_.”

“But…” _Nothing. All I had…_ The realization sank hard, an anchor on his heart threatening to pull him under. He looked helplessly at Jaskier. “What’s real, then?”

Dismay crept over Jaskier’s face, his mouth partly open but offering no answers. The gruff voice within told him to survive, to move again. He stood, too overwhelmed, his mind running in too many directions.

Another mental howl pierced his head. Jaskier flinched with him, holding his temple. He grabbed Geralt’s hand. “Come on! Let’s get away from here, at least.”

“Where?” he asked, a numb sickness in his belly. 

“We’ll figure that out as we go!” 

~~~

Yennefer sucked in a breath, coming out of her mental meditation at the smell of burnt flesh. She cast her gaze around with only the dim glow to illuminate the vague shapes around her, head full of pressure as she reoriented. 

A tentacle was writhing, curling and slithering on itself in pain. The medallion on Jaskier’s chest slowly shivered up his sternum as it vibrated. 

Lucky bard… She had sensed the creature’s intent to kill Jaskier. She would have been too slow to stop it, but now she needn’t fixate on the failure. 

“Ah. Silver works just fine on you, does it?” She tilted her head as she picked up the silver sword. Light for its size and beautifully balanced. She eyed the blade thoughtfully. “Well, if three minds aren’t enough to keep you occupied…” Her purple eyes flicked coldly to the monster. 

She pulled in a meditative breath, mind reaching out again, keeping just enough acknowledgement of her surroundings to keep the sword ready to angle against the monster’s bulk. Her brow pinched, searching through the mental scape. 

She just needed to find them in time…


	13. Humanity

Jaskier had never been so scared and furious at the same time. 

The creature had nearly killed him. He was certain it would have, were it not for Geralt’s amulet against his chest. It continued to vibrate, an insistent jittering herald of danger and monsters and magic. He kept a tight hold of Geralt’s wrist, making sure he didn’t hesitate to leave the house behind. Oxenfurt’s streets sped around them as they fled. Lamplights and glowing windows were bright islands among the sinister walls and alleys. All the while, he wanted to tear something apart even as he feared being caught or dropping dead any second. 

The angles and street lengths were off from what Jaskier remembered, as places could be in a dream or one’s memory. Geralt let him lead, silent. He’d paled considerably, but hadn't yet reached the unnatural pallor his skin should be. More unsettling, he looked like he might throw up if Jaskier allowed him the chance. He’d watched Geralt pull organs out of monsters without the slightest grimace. He’d dug through corpses for clues, waded into the foulest sewers on hunts, swallowed down the foulest potions. Jaskier had never seen him nauseous. 

It made him even more livid. How dare it! How dare it force Geralt’s feelings! To-to do _that_ to _him_ , wearing _his_ face! To shove attachments and a relationship, all so it could murder him! There were injustices, and then there were deeds for which a creature deserved to be skinned and drawn slowly into pieces for, and were they safe enough, he’d be hacking the monster to pieces! 

But they weren’t safe. Not here. He wasn’t sure how much of this scape was Geralt’s mind or the monster’s illusions, and if it was the former, he wasn’t sure if that was any help at all with Geralt in this state. 

_What’s real, then?_ He’d never seen Geralt so uncertain and vulnerable. Never so…

…Human. 

It wasn’t right. Not Geralt being human—the twisting. How the creature manipulated him into being more defenseless, more…emotional—gods, he hated all of this! 

They slowed near the docks, both panting hard. This hillside overlooked the dark river. The bridge was a torchlit arch against the night sky.

Geralt having to catch his breath from such a brief run worried Jaskier. “Oh, it’s done a number on you, hasn’t it?” he murmured breathlessly as he put his hands to his knees. 

“Har-hard to tell how much,” the dark-haired man agreed. He straightened, still dragging in fast breaths as he looked around. He wandered unsteadily to a bench and sat, looked around, and gave a humorless huff of laugh. “Always seem to end up here.”

Jaskier wasn’t sure what he meant. He looked around, eyes on the shadows for any lurking white tentacles. “Nice enough spot. There’s…not really a bench here, though.” He hurriedly corrected himself. “Well, there is, but it’s on the other side of the docks, and the bridge isn’t as viewable from there.” 

“Oh?” He hummed, short and considering. “It’s… wrong?” 

Jaskier sat on the bench as well, facing the opposite way so he could monitor the streets. They remained dark and still. Not even guards stood at their usual stations. “It’s alright. It’s not a bad replica, I just know Oxenfurt. I was a…” He flicked his gaze to Geralt, up and down his tunic that heralded a student of medicine. “Well, you know. Student here.”

“And I… wasn’t.” Geralt stared out at the river, his dark eyes glimmering in the faint light.

Accustomed to Geralt’s reflective eyes with their slit pupils, the human eyes seemed far too dim to Jaskier. He loved Geralt’s witcher eyes. Hell, he’d waxed poetic about them. _Beautiful, golden orbs, majestic hunter. Sharp, gleaming, fire without fear…_ Things he never wrote except in winter when he knew Geralt was far away and he was safe with his own thoughts, creating scrawls he’d allow no one to read. If it came to light his inner thoughts of the snowy-skinned stoic, he’d immolate from embarrassment.

Now, Geralt’s brow pinched, his lips thinning as he stared at the deep flow of water in clear dysphoria. 

It was so unlike Geralt… But, no, that wasn’t right of him to think. This Geralt wasn’t a stranger with his face. It _was_ Geralt, just… in very, _very_ different circumstances. 

The gray eyes weren’t bad, either, he decided. Different. Without the white hair and scars, Geralt didn’t possess near the ageless, rugged quality, but his face remained chiseled and handsome in all the ways that made Jaskier’s chest swirl with nerves and warmth. He leaned the heels of his hands on the edge of the bench, leaning back so he could see Geralt while still searching every shadow. “You would have been a fine student. I’ve _seen_ you mix potions. Quite the craft, that. You also have quite a head for numbers, though you can’t barter your way out of a gunny sack.”

Geralt looked puzzled for a moment, then abruptly laughed, leaning forward. He stopped mid-guffaw and made a small, pained sound, hands cupping around his head. 

Jaskier quickly pulled his knee around to straddle the bench, staring at him. “Is it hurting you?”

“No. It’s just…” He shook his head a little. Waves of ebon hair had further escaped his ponytail, dark around his knuckles. Not the heavy, straight tapers Jaskier was used to. Geralt sighed. “Just flashes. I’m not sure… I don’t know what’s really me anymore.”

Jaskier bit his lip. He wasn’t sure how to help. He looked up, wondering what to do now. Did they just need to wait for Yennefer? 

Some strange sound, like the moan of the wind over rooftops, had him jerk his eyes back to the buildings anxiously. “Well, uh, did… Did the monster keep you asleep, or-or unaware all the time?” 

He frowned, keeping his head clutched in his hands. “I… Let me think.”

Another sound. Jaskier turned to look up at the dock behind him, heart thudding. “Maybe… Maybe think faster?”

The flat look Geralt gave him when he raised his head was _very_ familiar, enough Jaskier would have grinned happily in different circumstances. The man shook his head, pinching the straight, narrow bridge of his nose, eyes closed. “It seems like I could wake before, when I knew what was and what wasn’t, but things are… fuzzy and distant.” 

“Ah. Right. I’ll just…” A scraping sound. He whipped his head toward an alley. “I’ll, uh, just be quiet and-and let you think. Think really, really hard. And fast. If you can.” 

“Dammit, Jask…” he grumbled. He suddenly reached over, gripped Jaskier’s _leg_ , so warm and firm that he nearly yelped. “If you’re going to talk, tell me something useful.” 

“Useful?” Jaskier’s voice was far too high. Thank goodness his nerves were numb around his legs! He was sure that firm touch would burn him with embarrassment otherwise. “Useful how?”

“Tell me facts.” He released his hold to pat his leg firmly, eyes still closed, brow pinched in concentration. “Something from the-the other life.” 

“Facts? Facts! Yes, I can tell you facts! Uh…” His mind remained blank, Geralt’s hand still on his knee in a familiar, thoughtless way. “Um…Um…!” 

A flick of white passing in the shadows of the alley had his mind rabbit with fright. “Y-you’re a witcher! You kill monsters, because you’re very strong, and-and fast, and you carry two swords on you back!” 

Geralt sucked in a breath, eyes remaining closed. “One silver?”

“Yes! Yes, exactly! One silver because monsters hate that! We’ve argued about why, and the theories of energy resonance in certain metals versus their composition, and Melitele’s _tits_!” That flick of white was definitely not his imagination. Jaskier’s mind raced. “Y-your horse’s name is Roach! You treat her like a queen! Rightly, so, I suppose. She puts up with a lot! B-but she bites sometimes! Uh…” The shape manifesting from the alley’s gloom stalked their direction. Jaskier patted Geralt’s shoulder. “Is-is any of this helping?”

“Mm… Keep talking.” 

“Well, _there’s_ a request I never thought I’d hear from you!” He stared at the curvy, dark-haired figure striding from the alley. Was that Yennefer? He hoped that was Yennefer. “Um, you-you once hit an echinop and it toppled down the cliffside! You went frantic getting to it to put it out of its misery!” He patted Geralt’s shoulder with increasing urgency. “When I asked why, you said not even beasts or monsters should be killed sloppily! S-something Vesemir taught you!”

Geralt lifted his head, gray eyes wide. “Vesemir is real?”

Jaskier gawked at him, uncertain how to answer. 

“Geralt.” They both turned their heads to Yennefer as she approached. “What are you doing? Get up, both of you, so I can help you out of here.” She held both her hands out, brow pinched in a familiar, impatient way.

Jaskier looked behind her to the buildings, trying to spy any hint of the lurking monster. He stood from the bench, Geralt doing the same. “We were just trying to figure out how to do that!”

“You’re doing a rot job of it.” She lifted her palms. “Hands.” 

Geralt walked around the bench. “You weren’t in town…”

“I’m still not,” she said. “I’m in the real world.” Her fingers beckoned. “Come on. Honestly, you’ve caused us a lot of trouble.” 

Jaskier approached more timidly. The wolf’s head rattled more insistently. “Where’s the monster, Yen?” he asked cautiously.

Her purple eyes flashed blue as she narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s nothing you’ll worry about.” 

Jaskier nearly knocked Geralt over in his rush to step in front of him. He held the amulet up by the chain in front of him. “Nope! No, you get away from him!”

Yennefer’s face twisted briefly before staring icily “I may not be able to touch you there with that thing around your neck, being, but here…” A swipe of the hand, and the amulet vanished. She lifted the same hand, fingers bending claw-like. “And I am still wrapped around your head.”

“Shit!” Jaskier stumbled back with Geralt. The pain came like before, swift, so hard he didn’t remember hitting the street, just felt when his hands scrabbled against cobbles, trying to claw away from the agony. Geralt yelled his name, but in the distant haze of pain, it was a muffled echo. 

It stopped as suddenly as it began, flesh hissing and the inhuman shriek bursting through their minds once more. Jaskier flinched, arms over his head. He couldn’t understand why the monster had stopped, what was causing its current agony, not until he heard Yennefer’s voice ripple through his shocked mind, layered in strange echoes. 

_My focus slipped for a moment. Here. Go._

Geralt picked him up, forcing his unsteady feet under him. The monster writhed in Yennefer’s skin, the sorceress’ form warping, flailing, white swallowing up the dark clothing and hair to something shapeless. The flatter tail slapped at the street as the creature tried to right itself. And thank Melitele, there was a door! He didn’t need to force his mouth to work. Geralt took his weight and dragged him toward it. He kicked the rough, oaken timber, daylight spilling from beyond. The creature’s menacing shriek echoed in their heads as they fell through. 

Jaskier landed on his stomach, cool hard ground under his cheek and Geralt half tangled on him. His head rang with silence as soon as the door closed. He grimaced and attempted to clear the phantom pain in his head, remaining on his belly. “Fuck me…” he murmured. 

“Hardly the time,” Geralt mumbled back absently in his too-smooth, human voice. He patted Jaskier’s back, untangling his arm from under his chest. “Can you move?”

“Ask me that in a moment,” Jaskier complained. 

“Okay.” Geralt kept his palm on his back, and it was so companionable, so reassuring of him, Jaskier wanted to just lay there and revel in the feeling. The dirt scuffed quietly as Geralt sat up, remaining close as he looked around. 

The area they had escaped to seemed nice. Birds and insects sang with life around him. The breeze created a pleasant psithurism above. A brook babbled nearby. Geralt remained quiet until he sat heavily back from knees to his rear. “Oh…” 

That didn’t sound comforting. Jaskier lifted his cheek from the dirt. They were on a road, winding around a hillside. Pleasant enough area, and he didn’t see any immediate danger. Geralt stared at a trailhead leading off the road, a disturbed pinch in his brow. 

“What is it?” Jaskier pushed his hands against the ground, forcing up to his knees. 

“This… This is where it starts.” 

Jaskier looked up and down the road. He still saw nothing. His lip crooked up in confusion. “What starts?”

Geralt didn’t answer. He straightened to his feet, gray eyes flicking about the trees. “This is where I was left.”

Jaskier sat back more comfortably, arms on his knees as he squinted up at Geralt. Still strange, with his dark hair and round-pupils and lack of scars. “Left?”

Geralt motioned awkwardly. “She left me on the road.” 

There was no one here. Jaskier again looked around before focusing on Geralt as he paced. “What?”

Geralt gestured helplessly to the small road winding up the mountainside. “Just left me.” He looked down the hillside, palm spreading its direction. “She told me to get water. I did. It took me a short time to get to the stream and climb back. I was small, but I don’t think… It wasn’t that long. I climbed back up with the bucket and”—he looked at the empty road—“the cart was gone.” 

Realization dawned slowly, and Jaskier’s heart sank with the understanding. He climbed to his feet as well, looking around. There were no signs of civilization, no obvious landmarks. He saw the trail leading down to the stream, but that didn’t seem to lead to anywhere promising. It did not seem a kind place to abandon someone.

He swallowed. “How young were you?”

“I don’t know. Too young for a name, or at least too young to remember.”

“Oh, Geralt…”

There were no apologies sufficient enough. He watched Geralt pace fretfully, staring down the road one way, as though expecting to see something there. When nothing appeared, he shook his head. 

“I don’t know what I did wrong.” His gaze shifted uphill, over the road bend. “I think… I think I must have talked too much, asked too many questions.” Geralt’s hand curled near his sternum. “Or maybe my mother wanted a girl. I’ve seen families do that before. Or…or maybe whoever sired me was…” His voice wavered, and he stopped to press his lips together in a hard line. 

Jaskier stared at him, heart bleeding. “Is this… Is this where Vesemir found you?”

“Maybe?” Geralt looked back downhill, gray eyes hopeful. “But I remember seeing the cart before. I had just missed it! She’s probably just…” He looked to Jaskier before gazing down the hill. “Isn’t she?”

Jaskier stepped once, twice, and touched his elbow lightly. He didn’t trust his voice, so he just met Geralt’s searching gaze and shook his head. 

“But…” 

He shook his head again, more firmly, his jaw tight. 

The hope bled out of Geralt’s voice. “But that memory wasn’t real.”

“No,” Jaskier managed. 

The breeze soughed through the trees. The water bubbled and murmured down the hill. Geralt sat down at the edge of the road. Jaskier went with him, watching his eyes flick back and forth, his fingertips pressing together against his lips. Minutes crawled, and Jaskier didn’t have the heart to press Geralt to move. A few steadying breaths and he lowered his hands, staring straight ahead.

“How can I do this?” His brows lowered, anger mingling with the vulnerability raw in his eyes. “How can I be expected to feel all I’ve felt, to know what it’s like to be wanted and more, and to just accept that none of it, _nothing_ , was real?” His eyes turned on Jaskier, piercing. 

Jaskier opened his mouth. He had no answers for such an unfair question, so he shook his head. “Honestly? I don’t know.”

The anger slipped away like water through fingers. Geralt gazed straight ahead once more. “Did…” He swallowed. “Did this… Does my other life have purpose?”

“Yes,” he assured, because that was true. “You’ve done a lot of great things, helped many people, saved—I don’t know how many. Me included.” 

A jerky nod. “As a witcher.” 

“Yes.” 

“Everything else seems so real, too, though.” That heart-breaking hope was back in his eyes as he searched Jaskier. “Can’t I choose…?”

The question hung between them, and again Jaskier had to kill the hope with a small shake of his head. “Oh, no… It’s not really a choice. If you choose that path, you die and disappear from everyone’s memory. The monster wins.” 

Geralt’s shoulders sank. “And us… Our meeting and…?” 

Jaskier wished he dared to put an arm around him. “If you were not a witcher, we would never have met,” he explained gently. “I don’t know the exact math, but you were well over sixty years old by the time I was born. If you were human, well… You’d likely have been dead before I existed.” He gave a faulty smile. “I know meeting me is probably not a good incentive to choose otherwise—”

“No,” Geralt interrupted quietly. “No, that’s everything.”

Jaskier didn’t know how to untangle that statement. Geralt took three deep breaths, visibly gathering himself. By the time he stood up, his gray eyes seemed as steely as his blades. “I’ll need help.” 

He scrambled to his feet as well. “Help?”

“If I get confused, I’ll need you to tell me no.” 

“No?”

“Yes. Once I can figure out the path myself, I should be able to wake up. If something happens, you need to get out however way you can.” 

That sounded much more like the old Geralt he knew, even some of the rasp back in his voice. 

“Oh, okay.” Jaskier looked up the road. “So how do we…?” He looked back. 

Geralt was gone. 

Jaskier forgot to breathe. He whirled in place, frantically searching. “Geralt? Geralt!”

Movement by the trail caught Jaskier’s eye, and he turned to it in relief. Then stared in puzzlement at the small, curly-haired boy struggling onto the road with a bucket in hands. 

The boy didn’t seem to see him. Large eyes stared at the road, up it, back… In exactly the way Geralt’s adult self had, Jaskier realized. 

“Ma?” 

Oh, no, he wasn’t sure if he could watch this. Jaskier’s hands hung at his sides as the boy’s gaze skipped over him. He called more frantically, young brow pinched. Finally, he called a name. “ _Visenna!_ ”

“The Fates,” Jaskier murmured, “can suck my cock.”


End file.
